


The Victims

by passivelyexisting



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-04-23 15:27:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14335467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/passivelyexisting/pseuds/passivelyexisting
Summary: Julia Wicker is nineteen and aimless. She turned down offers to matriculate at half a dozen Ivies for reasons she can't seem to explain to her worried family but she has to try, because "I don't know," isn't an acceptable answer. In the course of one day, her life is turned upside, shaken around, and then righted, and finally, Julia's pieces fit together again. She discovers something from her dreams, but the shock may have impaired her pragmatism, and not quite everything is the wonder she thinks it is. At the same time, she meets Kady, a girl her own age who seems stubbornly intent on remaining a mystery, even as her and Julia form a cautious friendship.





	1. Chapter 1

She filled her sister’s plastic coffee mug with boiling water and dropped a tea bag inside, then stepped outside and locked the door. It was raining fiercely, the very best California could muster, and Julia had watched it from her window for a while before deciding she needed to be outside. She hadn’t brought an umbrella, but she did have a bulky raincoat that she let whip around her, unzipped. It was six o’clock, and her parents and sister would be awake soon. They would think she had gone somewhere, and she would let them. But she was going nowhere. She wandered down the streets of her neighborhood in search of it, walked through puddles and sat on park benches until the cold metal urged her onward.

Most of the shops were closed—early Sunday mornings weren’t prime business hours. But one appeared to be open, gentle lights illuminating the inside and a colorful “Open” sign hanging in the window. _Asmo’s Flowers and Sundries_. Julia didn’t think it had been there long, but she didn’t really pay attention to the revolving door of businesses that came to occupy one storefront after another. Bluehill was no longer a rustic detour on the way to the coast; it was up-and-coming with a plethora of prime real-estate, all in the coveted Wine County. She had gone to boarding school for two years, and when she came back, her town was a stranger to her.

Despite not really caring, Julia glanced inside as she passed by. A single girl stood behind the counter, with dark curly hair and deep plum lipstick. Most of her hair was flipped to one side, and it hung across her face slightly. The obfuscation of her right side did not diminish the strength behind her scowl, however, and her eyes remained fix upon one spot as if she was greatly contemplating something. Julia’s stomach clenched, and she felt a jolt pass through her chest. The girl lifted her eyes, and she quickly looked away and hurried past.

 _Wow_ , she thought. _She was pretty_. But Julia saw pretty people all the time. That girl was something else. It was easy to stamp strangers with whatever exotic qualities or past you wanted, but still, looking at her, Julia got the sense that she was powerful. It was a natural kind of intimidation, one conveyed at a glance, but Julia was not affected. Those kinds of charms passed over her these days.

She got to the coffee shop at six-thirty, just as they opened. She dumped the remaining tea in the trash can before she went in and then gave the mug to the girl behind the register to fill with her soy latte. Caffeine had been a major food group in her diet for the past year, and it did its job well. She slept barely more than three hours a night, on a good night. She knew that even without caffeine she wouldn’t be able to sleep, and she didn’t really want to deal with that, so she stuck to her daily 500 milligrams intake and ignored any underlying issues that might come with it.

The barista smiled at Julia the way one does to a regular who buys the same over-priced coffee every day. Her nametag said Marina. Whenever Julia came in during the morning, she was there. She was about Julia’s age—probably enrolled in the local college.

“Thanks.” Julia said when she slid the cup back over to her.

“Anytime,” the girl said. Referring to her by name, even inside Julia’s own head, felt too friendly to her.

She took a sip as she looked for a seat. Even though it was draining her meager savings account—mainly babysitting money from when she was a preteen—she had to admit, it was damn good coffee. She always felt buzzed afterward, more so than when she drank the coffee from home.

She decided on the couches facing each other. The cushions were divinely comfortable, but the corresponding social aspect tied to it was not. However, Julia thought they would be empty for a while, so she helped herself.

It was then she noticed the painting. There were other paintings in the café, of course, from local artists or high school students or whoever the fuck wanted to display their art, but this one piqued Julia’s interest. It was hanging on the wall behind the counter, maybe because it was not for sale like the other ones, or maybe it was a favorite, lovingly being given the spotlight.

The canvas was just a little bigger than her laptop, and it showed the ocean, but just a hint of it. A sand dune rose up from the foreground and blocked the view, except for a small opening in the spinifex sericeus—the tall, spiky grass—blown apart by the wind. It didn’t look real. The lines were too hazy, not sharp enough, like it had come from a dream and hadn’t quite made the journey to paper intact.

Still, even if it just lived inside someone’s head, Julia thought it was beautiful. She thought she’d like to go there.

Julia caught the girl’s eye. “Hi, sorry. How much does that painting cost?” she said.

“Oh, that’s not for sale,” she said as she looked down and readjusted her necklace. Her forefinger dipped an inch too far—down her low-cut blouse. Was she fixing her bra? It looked like one of her eyebrows twitched as she looked up at Julia. A flirtatious challenge? It felt more aggressive than flirty, though, and Julia wondered if she realized. She had always been a little quirky, always flirting with all the people who came in while simultaneously carrying herself with an air of snobbery that effectively deterred most of her advances. 

“Um.” she looked away for a second, but then her eyes darted back. “Well, why not?”

The girl sighed, and both of her hands returned to the counter in front of her. “It’s a piece of shit.” she said.

“Oh.” Julia said. “What?”

She waved a hand dismissively. “We can’t turn away artists. Or, we don’t. God knows I would. But the owner’s big into altruism and shit, everyone deserves a chance, yada, yada. This artist though, she’s a real bitch. That’s why it’s there. One goddamn place in the whole joint everyone fucking notices. And then asks me about.”

“Alright…” Julia said hesitantly. “Since it’s a piece of shit, can I take it off your hands?”

“Really?” her voice came out high at first, but she quickly sweetened it. “You’re a pretty girl, you should have nice things. I can get nice things for you…do even nicer things _to_ you.” Her tongue wet her ultra-pink lips, and this time—Julia was sure—she did raise an eyebrow.

“Um,” she said again. These days, Julia kind of felt like there was a ticking clock in her head whenever she went outside, counting down the minutes to a breakdown. Right now, she just wanted to go home and sleep. She might have given a shit in high school, but this girl could flirt with her all she wanted now and Julia knew she was going to be about as responsive as a brick wall. “Right, so is fifty dollars good?” she said.

The girl rolled her eyes. “Sure, sweetie.”

 

When Julia got home, her family was gone. Running errands, meeting friends, whatever. She was glad she didn’t have to talk to them on her way to her room. The girl had insisted on giving her another coffee—on the house. The least she could do for sending her home with such crap.

The first thing she did when she was safely behind her locked bedroom door was hang the picture across from her bed. It was the only thing on the white walls, and it made her feel a little better. Like all the emptiness surrounding it wasn’t quite so intimidating. She imagined it was the sand on the beach.

She crawled into bed with her laptop and the coffee after the painting was successfully nailed to the wall. Her only source of income for the past months had been an online tutoring website. She had been using it less frequently now, but when she was feeling not-quite-so-shitty she would log on. It’d be nice to have some money saved when her parents inevitably kicked her out.

The math came easy to her, like it always had. If anything, it came even easier, because her mind was mostly blank now. Cleared of any and all distractions before she even started. She limited her services to high school students, and usually ended up with AP Calculus students, but sometimes a few Trig students slipped in. She was working with one of those now, solving problem after problem on his work sheet and diligently explaining through text how to solve each. When she was done with that, she told him he should get his textbook out and do some more for extra practice, with her help, of course. He didn’t need it, but she didn’t want to be done yet.

She had taken down the clock in her room a couple weeks ago. The constant, judgmental ticking had been driving her insane. Still, her eyes instinctively flickered to the spot on the wall where it had used to hang. It had been a couple hours, she guessed. The sun was brighter, reaching its peak through the blinds in her room. Next to her window was the painting. It too seemed brighter than it had that morning.

Then, she really started to trip out.

The spinifex sericeus had moved. Was moving. Wind had blown the strands apart, revealing the beach below. And on the sand, there was a woman. Or maybe a girl. She was no bigger than a thumbtack, and she was looking away, out into the ocean. Shining brown hair whipped behind her, tugged by the wind.

AFK, she typed and crossed the room. She stared at it for a minute or so, and when it didn’t change, she leaned in, her face an inch away from the paint, and watched. She dared it to move.

“Go on, brain.” she whispered. “You think this shit scares me?”

Her brain complied. It dared her to keep watching as the girl began to walk toward the edge of the frame. Julia’s breath stuttered. When she reached the end of her little painted world, she lifted her arm and extended a finger. Julia followed her gesture to the window.

She raised the blinds and peered outside. The sky was loud and clear, the sun was shining, and below, a man was walking a chihuahua on the sidewalk. He crossed the bridge that stood over the shallow creek, and then there was no one. Maybe she was meant to be listening to a noise, so she undid the latch and pushed the window open. Gusty air rushed in and she could hear the faint chirping of birds over distant cars, but nothing unlike any other day.

Julia stepped away, but she left the window open. She looked back to the painting. As far as she could tell, it was the same. The girl still stood, pointing to something beyond the end of her world. Or maybe it was something within the painting, something Julia couldn’t see.

“Jesus Christ,” she said softly. She returned to her bed and numbly pulled her knees up against her chest. What the fuck was wrong with her? Was she crazy? The truly unnerving, dangerous kind of crazy that saw things that weren’t there?

She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised, she told herself as she shivered and ran her fingers through her hair, dragging out loose strands. Her eyes closed reflexively, and then she sealed her hands over them for good measure. But why now? Why so many months after she had broke? She wasn’t exactly having a blast right now, but like someone standing at the top of a bridge realizing maybe they’d rather just walk away, she felt like yelling out that she had changed her mind. 

Yeah, maybe most days didn’t feel like anything and the closest moment to satisfaction she got during them was when she crossed off another day on her calendar even though she wasn’t counting down to anything and that kind of worried her, but she didn’t want to be crazy.

_Alright, well, Julia, whoop-de-doo. No one wants to be crazy. But let’s examine the evidence before a conviction is made, right_?

_Come on, open your eyes_. Her eyes opened. She unclasped her hands and let her legs straighten out. She took a breath.

She looked up. The painting stared back innocently. The girl was still there, the beach was still visible, the sky was still brighter. It was indisputably, without question, definitely different from this morning when she had bought it.

“Okay,” she said. She said it again with more force. “Okay.” To herself, to the painting, to the universe, to the empty walls judging her. So, it had changed. Hypothesis A) she was crazy. But Julia, until relatively recently, was an overachieving perfectionist, plucked straight from Stanford’s wet dreams. So, she knew that was just one explanation derived from the observable data. She could make another hypothesis. So, Hypothesis B)—don’t freak out just yet, and ignore that the following could actually strengthen Hypothesis A)—magic was real.

She didn’t say the words aloud but thinking them was still powerful enough to fill the room with its echoes. Magic. Magic was real, she thought again. She looked around; no holes appearing in the walls, no explosions, no Earth spinning off its axis.

_Hmm_.

She bounced off her bed again and gently brushed a finger over its surface. A swelling built in her chest and maybe—could it be her imagination?—her hand grew a little warmer from the rays of another sun. 

Something in the bottom right corner caught her eye. Her finger slid down and swept across it. A pinprick of warmth. It was a single letter, an uppercase “K”. The artist’s signature? 

Julia hadn’t even considered what she was going to do next, but it was clear now. If she wanted to prove that she was either batshit or that magic was real, and her life could maybe squeeze out some meaning, she had to find the artist.

 

The front door opened, and her parents stepped inside. They were halfway through a heated discussion about some new university policy—Julia hadn’t paid attention during what passed as “family dinners” for a while—but they both stopped silent in their tracks when they saw their daughter bustling about in the kitchen.

Julia was making pasta. She smiled to her parents and greeted them. They chatted with her— though truthfully, it was more “at” her—while she cooked, and she dutifully listened. She had two decades of being a good daughter under her belt, and all things considered, it was a pretty basic skill. Like riding a bike.

When she was finished, they let her go up to her room and as they breathed sighs of relief, she could practically hear them mentally popping a champagne bottle. Oh, rejoice, for Julia has gotten her shit together and acted like a human being for a whole evening! 

They meant well, she knew, but she could never live a life like theirs. Mundane, routine, dull…the same shit everyday forever until you were too old to carry on. A mortgage and a 401(k) and maybe, oh, two or three kids to make you feel like you’d done something worthwhile. 

Her room greeted her with brisk, refreshing night air. She had forgotten she had left the window open earlier. She stood in the doorway for a moment and grinned. She felt how she knew her parents had never felt. How she had been afraid she would never feel. The feeling her and Quentin used to chase, sitting in the park underneath the sun and reading mountains of fiction novels.

There had been a magic painting in Narnia, right? She thought she remembered that. For the fiftieth time in the past hour, she felt her mind sway again toward her hopeless, desperate wish. It was like a seesaw: whenever she had a new thought, it plopped down on the crazy side or the magic side and dragged the whole plank one way or another. And new thoughts just kept raining down. Crazy, for sure. Magic, too impossible _not_ to be real.

Undeniably, this was an adventure. It made her feel solid. For the past year, she had watched her lines lighten and disappear into the air around her. It had felt like she was being erased. This felt like the opposite. Like she was finally being colored in.

Julia thought about Quentin and her heart ached. “Maybe we were right, Q.” she whispered to the white walls that didn’t scare her anymore.

 

She ate her pasta at her desk while she renewed her library card online. She would go first thing tomorrow and do a full body search for any books on the possible existence of magic. It would be nice if something would just fall into her lap, like a letter from Hogwarts or a perfectly ordinary-looking closet. But that wasn’t up to her. If she needed to push and shove and pry magic from whatever crevices it was holed up in, she would. The girl at the coffee shop had clearly known the artist well enough to think she was a bitch, so that's where Julia would look next, after the library. 

Her eyes drifted back to the painting and even though she wasn’t really surprised, her heart still sped up for a few beats. The girl was still pointing but she had turned her head, now fully facing Julia. She had soft, knowing hazel eyes and a tan face. She was smiling widely, like she knew something Julia didn’t. “Look outside,” a voice said. It could have been the wind, or Julia’s own thoughts, but the words felt like they came from her.

She obeyed. It was dark now; the neighborhood backstreet was dimly illuminated by a single lamp post. The bridge was cast in moonlight and below in the shallow water Julia could see little ripples. Curiously, there were a few big ones that began in the center, like the aftermath of someone dropping something into the water. She looked up to the bridge again and saw a girl tucked in shadow, dangling her legs in the gaps between the thin metal rails. The girl straightened her back momentarily and entered a beam of moonlight, illuminating her from the neck up. It was her. The girl from the flower shop.

Before she entirely knew what she was doing, Julia shut her laptop and slipped on a pair of sneakers and a jacket. She bounded down the stairs and was out the door when she fully grasped her intention. That didn’t mean she had a plan, though.

When she reached the foot of the bridge, the girl was gone. She felt a wave of disappointment wash through her, for reasons she didn’t fully understand. She was about to turn back and head inside when someone said, “Hey.”

It was coming from below, and sure enough, when Julia looked down there she was, standing above the creek bed. She was holding several shiny stones in one hand and something that looked like a cigarette in the other. Could be a joint, too.

“Oh. Hi,” Julia said.

“You look familiar.” she said. It’s not exactly friendly, nor accusatory, just an observation. 

“I walk by your shop most days.”

She laughed, “Oh, so you know who I am.”

Julia paused. “No, I mean, I’ve just seen you in there.”

The girl eyed her carefully for a moment. Julia could barely see her face from here, let alone her eyes, but they flashed in the light occasionally as she shifted, and Julia could tell they were hard. Wary, and full of secrets. She was well acquainted with eyes like those.

“Okay.”

“Were you skipping stones?” Julia asked. She wasn’t sure why the girl had said anything to her at all, but now that she had, Julia desperately needed to keep this conversation going. Why, she was not sure, except that she was compelling, and Julia was indeed being compelled.

“Nah.” she said. Then added, “I actually never learned how to. I just drop the stones in and watch the little waves crest and fade. I imagine it has the same calming effect, more or less.” A hint of defensiveness had slipped into her tone.

“Wanna know for sure?” Julia said. “I can show you.”

Again, a moment of sizing her up passed. Then she nodded and said, “Yeah, alright.” She started to climb out of the creek. “My name is Kady, by the way.”

Kady. It fit her. Before Julia could answer, however, she heard a grunt and then watched as Kady lost her balance and fell backwards with a sickening crunch. “Oh, motherfucker,” she said in a tight voice.

“Jesus Christ, are you okay?” Julia rushed over to the side of the creek and peered down at her cautiously. “What was that noise?”

“Branch, I think.” she said, but she didn’t get up.

“Can you walk?”

“Um…” she reached her hands behind her and pushed, but as soon as she put weight on her feet, she collapsed back into the water. “That’d be a no.”

“Which foot?” Julia asked, already crouching and carefully making her way to the bottom.

“Right. I’ve had sprains before. This is definitely broken. I’ve been down in this creek a million times, the fuck is wrong with me,” she said, shaking her head.

Julia ignored the thrill that ran through her when she said “a million times”. She wondered how many nights Kady had been fifty feet away from her as she laid awake and numb in bed for six hours.

“Not your fault. Could happen to anyone. Take my hand,” she said. Kady did, and between the two of them, managed to get onto her feet, or foot. She held the other one a few inches above the ground.

Kady hung her arm over Julia’s shoulder, and Julia grasped her right shoulder firmly with one hand and let the other hold Kady’s dangling hand.

“Okay, one, two, three.” Julia said, and pulled them up. Kady groaned and gritted her teeth, but not loudly and she said nothing. Julia had never broken a bone, but she was impressed. Had to hurt like a fucker. It took a minute or two, but they got themselves to the top. Julia leaned them both against a nearby tree as they caught their breath.

“I’m Julia, by the way,” she said, and stuck her hand to the side.

Kady laughed breathily and took her hand. “Good to meet you Julia.”

“So, um, should I drive you to the E.R.?”

She groaned—unrelated to the question, Julia thought. “I don’t know. You shouldn’t do anything, really. Most people would have just left me down there. You’ve gone above and beyond, stranger.” she clasped Julia’s shoulder. The touch made her blush.

“Most people are shitty, then. Come on, my car’s parked like thirty feet away.” Julia readjusted her hold on her and started walking before Kady could respond either way. They passed by Julia’s house, where she could still see the light on in her bedroom. For once, she didn’t find herself wishing she was there, tucked safely inside a dark blanket and sheltered with music fit to shatter eardrums. She wanted to be outside in the dark wrapped in cold with a warm girl leaning on her and lighting little sparks inside her veins.

Julia unlocked the car and opened the passenger’s seat door. She leaned on the carpeted floor as she helped Kady lower herself onto the seat, then she went around to the other side and slid behind the wheel.

“Okay, so there’s a hospital about two miles from here. I’ll take you there?” 

“Yeah,” Kady said, mostly succeeding in keeping the strain out of her voice.

She drove quickly, unsure if she should fill the silence or try to distract her. Kady didn’t seem exceptionally talkative, although she had said hi to Julia, out of the blue, so maybe she was more sociable than she seemed. But Julia didn’t think so. Her head warned her not to be self-centered, but a small whisper inside her told her that Kady wouldn’t have stopped just anyone. She wanted something from her. Julia didn’t know if she should be grateful or concerned.

“Do you just work at the flower shop, or do you own it?” Julia asked, glancing her way. She felt a little foolish—what late-teen, early-twenty-something owns a business?—but she had only ever seen Kady inside, and she passed it nearly every day, at all different times. Bluehill was a breeding ground for rich kids, anyway. Julia supposed she was one, herself. Maybe Kady was the daughter of some millionaire winemaker with a fancy for flowers and a hefty trust fund.

Something imperceptible passed over her, but she did a good job of hiding it. Too bad for her Julia was a remarkable observer. Her hand tightened around the steering wheel and the corner of her mouth twitched downward slightly. “It’s complicated,” she said, but her voice was not strained like Julia expected it to be. It was quiet and simple, and Julia understood that it really was complicated, so she said nothing else.

When they reached the hospital, Julia parked as close to the entrance as possible and then helped Kady get out the car. Julia put both of her arms around her to support her, but Kady’s hung loosely by her sides as she limped along.

The doors slid apart for them and a woman sitting behind the counter looked up at them. There was a dozen or so seats, most of them taken, though at a quick glance, no one’s situation looked dire.

“Hi,” Julia said. “My—” she hesitated. “Stranger,” Kady’s voice said inside Julia’s ears. _You were “stranger” even after she knew your name_ , Julia reminded herself. She was like the café girl to Kady, whose name Julia had learned a dozen times over but never used because it indicated a level of familiarity that just wasn’t there. Had she made such a faint impression on Kady?

The woman raised her eyebrows as her eyes peered out impatiently and the words were startled out of Julia. “Uh, friend. She broke her ankle.”

“All right. Your name, miss?” she said to Kady.

“Kady.” It might have been her imagination, but Julia thought she saw her eyes flick rapidly in her direction. “Orloff-Diaz.”

She rifled through something below the counter and then handed a clipboard to Kady. “You need to fill this out, and then a doctor can see you. First time breaking a bone?”

“Nah,” Kady said, pulling a pen from the cup. “First time going to the E.R., though.” She turned away and limped over to the window to take a seat. Julia followed her unsurely. She sounded almost resentful—Julia supposed that comment about most people leaving her there might have been a hint she actually wanted to be left alone. She had a whole mysterious-tough-loner vibe going on, and Julia had killed it.

She took the seat next to Kady while she filled out the form. 

To be honest, Julia didn’t give a fuck if she was killing her vibe. Because suspecting what she did, she couldn’t just walk away. That the painting had sent Julia after her, that Kady had talked to her for a reason, and that she might be the key to unlocking magic.

And even if she was wrong about that, there was still something about this girl, something just a little not-quite-right and she was going to find out what it was.

“You could probably go now,” Kady said as her pen continued to scratch against the paper.

Julia didn’t look at her. “I don’t mind staying. I drove you all the way here, I’m invested now. And as long as you don’t die or anything, I’m gonna need you to cough up some change for the gas.”

Kady looked up then, and Julia smiled to let her know she was joking. “Thank you,” she said simply, her face softening slightly. It was still cloudy, but the storm trapped beneath the surface had stopped raging. “Why don’t you go get some fresh air? Then ruin it with a cig. I’ll be here for a while. There’s no need for both of us to go crazy waiting.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said. She liked the night air, and she could give Kady some space, since it was clear that’s what she wanted.

She got up from her seat and headed back out through the automatic door. There was a pack of cigarettes in her glovebox, so she walked to her car to get them and then she leaned against the hood as she smoked.

A needle of doubt pierced through her. What if the painting was normal again when she got back? What if she’d dreamed up the whole thing after a year of barely keeping herself alive? The brain could snap, Julia knew. She had been going down the path anyway, and her mind might have finally said “fuck it” and accelerated the process. The whole day replayed before her eyes, and a hot, dizzying flash ran through her as the doubt grew stronger. She was going crazy, she was really going crazy.  
Julia put the cigarette out and steadied herself against the car. She might be crazy, but if she was, her brain was giving her the one thing that had a chance of saving her—hope—and that wasn’t something to scoff at. Breathe in, breathe out. She pushed away from the car and walked back inside.

The woman behind the counter was gone. In her seat, there was a man: young, white, good-looking. But he looked out of place. As she got closer, she realized he wasn’t wearing scrubs. Just normal clothes, a sweater and jeans. And he was looking straight at her. She broke the uncomfortable eye contact and looked to the window where she had left Kady, but she was gone. Her eyes swept across the rest of the room, but she didn’t see her.

She approached the man. “Hi, is the girl who was sitting over there,” she pointed toward the empty seat, “being seen?”

He waved his hand impassively. “Gone. She’s not important.” He paused, and his eyes swept up and down her frame. Hardly an inch of her skin was exposed below her neck, but she still bristled under the blatant stare. “Julia Wicker.” he said lightly, his eyes returned to staring into her own.

Julia didn’t recall giving the hospital her name. Had Kady told them? But then, Kady didn’t know her last name. And why did he say she wasn’t important? That was rude, and it didn’t make any sense.

The man smiled, and his eyes twinkled. “This was left for you.” He withdrew a book from beneath the counter and set it in front of her. She took it dubiously and glanced back to him.

“I’m not going to answer your questions,” he said, as though reading her mind. “Just go.” His tone was still cheery, but his eyes stared into her’s with a warning.

Slowly, she walked out, glancing back once or twice but he was no longer looking in her direction. No one else in the room seemed aware of anything unusual happening.

The wind embraced her as she stepped outside. She felt her senses return, and her head clear. For the first time, she looked down at the book she held in her hands. It was small, the size of a standard paperback, except it was bound with thin green leather. The pages were thick and yellow and jutted out from between the covers. And on the front, the words “THE CHATWINS” were emblazoned in all caps and a loopy, faded font that made it difficult to read.

She gingerly lifted the cover. The first page was blank, and when she flipped to the next one, she found a torn note: _This book did not come to you by accident. Virginia Street, the marked house_. She took the note and slipped it in her pocket, then read the text that had been beneath it.

__

_Introduction_

_There was a time in history wherein man and magic briefly coexisted._

_Not all of man, but five siblings. Martin, Fiona, Rupert, Helen, and Jane Chatwin. The Chatwins were English orphans who came to Ireland after the eldest discovered they had a living uncle who had recently acquired an Estate there. They lived there for two decades, during which they established the only magical society to ever exist, before their mysterious deaths, their uncle’s disappearance, and the burning of his Estate. There remains no record of the Chatwins or Cnoc na gorm, the Estate, at the time of publication of this book._

_This account exists to preserve history._

_Your humble Author_

She shut the book. Then opened it again and rifled through the pages. They weren’t numbered, but there were at least a couple hundred. Julia saw the word “magic” more than a dozen times.

Her vision was blurring, and the night air was no longer keeping her grounded. She imagined herself lying down on the pavement and slipping through, falling down, down, down into another world where she understood all of these things laid out before her.

The painting. The moving, gesturing painting. Kady Orloff-Diaz, the strange girl from the flower shop. And the cryptic man inside a hospital who didn’t fit in and gave her a book that didn’t belong in this world like it did, like it belonged to her. Add it all up. The sum is the answer. Julia was good at math—Julia was a fucking genius at math—but this was not math, and there was no right answer. There could be many, there could be none. She could be crazy, this could be real.

She thought about her kid sister and her poor, ordinary parents. What had it been like to live with her for the last year? Ostensibly, she was the same Julia as before, except just enough puzzle pieces were missing for a case to be made she was the wrong one. They had somehow gotten ahold of the wrong puzzle and trying to cram the pieces they had into it was never going to work.

She thought about young Julia. She didn’t recognize that kid anymore. She remembered parts of her childhood, but they felt fabricated, like she was reading about them in a story that had happened to someone else. Had that really been her life? Lying awake in the middle of the night years ago because she couldn’t fall asleep and feeling terribly, desperately afraid for some unfathomable reason. Had she been afraid for what was to come? When she was nineteen and afraid and alone and it no longer ended each morning when she woke up?

She thought about Quentin and she wondered what he would say. What he would think. She thought he would believe.

What was the answer? The one she would pick? She did the math in her head: sketched the numbers neatly and then threw in the dice.

And there it was. Magic was real.

She smiled and sank to the sidewalk as she began to sob. She didn’t try to stop it. Some primal instinct had taken hold of her and was feeding directions straight to her limbs, bypassing her brain entirely. Like a drowned person coughing up the water and replacing it with air, this was her body being resuscitated. The wind was gentle around her, caressing her face with wispy tendrils as the tension seeped from her into the pavement for some other sucker to worry about. Not her. She was beyond that now.

She hugged the book to her chest as she wept. It hadn’t been her demented, dying mind making one last feeble attempt to bring her back to herself. It was all real, and she knew about it.


	2. Chapter 2

When Kady was eleven years old, she lost three teeth.

Her birthday was late in the summer, and Hannah had bought her a cake after the party that said, “FUCK THEM,” because no one had come. It was the best cake Kady had ever had, and her and Hannah had eaten two slices each. She fell asleep halfway through the second one, and when she woke up, Hannah was gently pulling her out of the car. She had taken Kady to a friend’s house.

“Mommy has to go away for a little, Kady. You’re going to stay with Mommy’s friend, and she’ll take good care of you. Okay, baby?”

Kady nodded, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She remembered the cake and smiled. “Will you be back soon?”

“Sure, sweetie.” Hannah said, as she gently pushed Kady toward the house. She got in the car and started the ignition. She rolled down the window. “Bye! Be good!” she said, and then drove out of view.

Her friend was named Mary. She was nice to Kady, but she was very forgettable, and sometimes she would tell Kady to go to the park, and when she came back, the door was locked. She had to sleep on the porch those nights. When she remembered who Kady was, she made her pancakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and let her watch whatever channels on T.V. she wanted. She always smelled like cigarettes, but she always denied it. The only time she ever lectured Kady was when she found her trying to light one herself. She made her promise she would never smoke, and Kady agreed.

Besides Mary, Kady didn’t really talk to anyone. The park was empty during the day, and Mary was often gone from her house. She waited by bus stops and told strangers that her parents had forgotten to give her the bus fare for the way back. She spent their money at the movies. All the people that worked there thought she was some oddball, home-schooled kid and sometimes they would graciously let her into a rated-R movie and give her a discounted Icee. 

She tried calling Hannah when she got lonely, but she never answered. She didn’t even have a personalized voicemail, so all Kady got was a stupid robot voice.

After she had been living with Mary for almost two months, she came home from the movies and found the door locked. The door was never locked during the day, though, because Kady left after Mary did and she always left it open for herself. She knew Mary must have come home early, but it was only midday, so Kady was sure she would come back out later and find her.

She sat outside and waited. She watched the sun shift in the sky, and the clouds float past. When it started to get dark, she knew it must have been around six. She wrapped herself in the blanket she kept next to the doormat as she leaned against the porch railing. The house was bright; all the lights were still on. She watched the warm glow from outside until she fell asleep.

When she woke, it was already late morning, and Mary still hadn’t come outside. She wondered if she was having one of her forgetful periods where she didn’t come out of bed and left the stove unattended and jumped when she saw Kady sitting in her living room.

She folded her blanket up neatly, set in on the porch, and headed into town. It was only a thirty-minute walk and most of it was in broad daylight. She didn’t usually have any trouble. There was an overpass she had to travel under at one point that unsettled her. It was a dimly lit hotspot for the homeless, devoid of the foot traffic just ten minutes away at the town’s center.

As she slipped into the shadows, and the faint sound of cars driving overhead filled the air, a hand darted out and wrapped around her ankle, holding it there while her body continued forward. She smacked face-first into the sidewalk. 

With blood in her mouth, she crawled off the ground and glowered at her attacker. A grimy teenage boy. His back rested against the wall as he chuckled at her.

"Hiya, Katie," he said. "You got my money?"

Kady didn't know his name, but she knew him. She saw him everywhere in town, outside of stores and passed out on park benches. One of those times, she had nicked his tin cup while his back was turned.

"No," she said, as he grinned at her. He kept laughing as she walked noiselessly to his side and raised her foot. She brought it down on his chest, once, and then she kicked him again, lower, and she knew it was somewhere painful because he yelped. His chuckles turned to gasps. She kicked him again and again and again until he slouched over, his face making the same unforgiving introduction to the concrete, and then she leaned over and spit on him. There was more blood in her mouth than saliva, and so he raised his head to look at her, splattered in red.

“Jesus fuck, kid,” he said breathily. She spit again, but this time because there was something alien in her mouth and she wanted it gone. A jagged, yellow tooth landed on his cheek.

It slid down to the pavement near his face. He looked at it, then at her. Slowly, he pulled himself back into his sitting position, gingerly pinched the tooth between his thumb and forefinger, and held it out to her. She ignored him and walked away.

Hannah said she had anger issues. She thought that might be why she kept leaving her.

Her nose bled as she passed the shops. She wiped at it absently. As she passed a bakery, her stomach rumbled, but she ignored it. She only had a couple of twenties left, and she wanted to buy a puffer coat she’d been eyeing. It wasn’t summer anymore, and the nights were dark and cold now.

She went into the shop at the end of the block, some sort of men’s clothing chain. There was no bell in the doorway, and no one waiting behind the counter. She took the coat right off the mannequin and zipped it up, then put the money on the cash register. As she turned around to leave, something caught her eye.

A ladder was propped against the wall near the back of the store. It was blocked by a couple of rows of boots, but its bright red paint winked out at her.

Kady had an idea.

She went over and examined it. Smiling slightly, she took it down and leaned it against the ground, then brought it over her shoulder and lifted it, placing a hand on the top and one on the bottom. She knelt by the counter and carefully set it down, then put a couple more bills on the register.

“Can I help you?” said a gruff voice. Kady tucked the remaining money in her pocket and glanced back. A tall, middle-aged man was walking toward her, but he stopped when he saw her face. His presence relaxed.

“Woah, are you okay, kid? Did someone hurt you?” he made a movement forward, and Kady took a corresponding step backward. He flashed his open palms. “You’re all right.” he said. 

“Trevor, keep an eye on her. I’m gonna go call the police,” he said and then quickly hurried through a door at the back of the store.

A boy appeared a few feet away from her, where the man had been standing. He was a couple years older than her, and his face was covered in splotchy pubescent acne with a pair of square glasses balancing on his nose. He pushed them up as he watched her silently.

“Why is he calling the police?” she asked. “I put money on the counter.”

“Your face is really fucked up.” he said. “Did you get in a fight or something?”

She still faintly tasted blood in her mouth, and when she looked down to her shirt, she saw the whole collar was stained with red. She brought her hand to her face and felt something warm, and then brushed a finger lightly against her nose. A sharp, searing pain filled her vision and she whimpered pitifully.

“Shit, don’t do that. It’s broken, probably.” the boy said. She looked at him. He made no move to approach her.

“If the police come, Mary’ll get in trouble and I’ll get taken away.” It had happened before with Hannah, years ago. “Then my mom won’t be able to find me.”

He shrugged. “My mom’s a bitch.” His glasses slipped again, and he pushed them up. “Why does she need to find you? Did she leave you?”

Kady nodded.

“Well, then she’s a bitch, too.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Kady said.

“Listen, the next time you’re in a fight, you’ll kick ass,” he told her.

“I already did.” she said, and he grinned, revealing his shiny metal teeth. Braces. Hannah said they were a scam.

Kady picked up the ladder again, swaying slightly as she balanced it atop her shoulder. “Bye, Trevor,” she said and saluted him on her way out the door. He didn’t try to stop her.

She walked back home slowly, the end of the ladder occasionally grating against pavement. She had to stop a couple times and set it down until her arms stopped burning. Eventually, she was outside of the house.

The door was still locked, and all the lights were on. It was only the second night, and Kady had once spent three nights outside when Mary had gone to the hospital, but it had been clear then no one was home. This time, someone was. She considered breaking a window, but that would make Mary sad, because she would have to pay for it. Kady didn’t like it when she was sad. It would have been much easier if she got angry, but she never did, not at Kady, and not at anyone. 

This was a much better plan.

She leaned the ladder against the side of the house. It was just tall enough to reach a couple feet below the slanted roof of the first story. At the top of the shingled mountain was Mary’s bedroom window.

Kady put her foot on the first rung and pushed down, then cautiously raised her other foot to the second one. The metal had grown cold in the evening air, but it helped her stay alert. She reached the top and looked up. The edge of the roof was still at least three feet away. She brought herself to her tip-toes and stretched her arm out. Her fingers tugged at open air.

She took a deep breath and then jumped. Her foot slipped off the edge before she was fully off the ladder and gravity quickly pulled her down. She landed partly on her side and partly on her back, but it felt like she had been socked in the chest.

“Fuck!” Kady yelled as she coughed, and the cold air scraped against her lungs. She laid there for a moment until her heart slowed down and she could breathe easily again. Mary came to the window and looked down at her, smiling reassuringly, but then Kady blinked and she was gone.

She raised herself to her feet, doling out her weight as usual. Her right foot screamed in protest, and she screamed along with it.

“If you wanted me gone, you could have said so! I would have left!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “You and Hannah are bitches!” she said, and a few tears dropped down her cheeks. They mixed with the dried blood, and then there was red dripping down her chin again.

Ignoring the throbbing in her foot and the moisture on her face, she pulled herself onto the ladder once again. This time, when she reached the top, she stopped for a moment and watched the rim. She stood on her tip-toes and told her foot it was not allowed to buckle beneath her. It wobbled, but it held. Her hands reached out and she braced herself, then pushed off from both feet.

Her fingers wrapped around the edge of the roof as she dangled above the ground. She tucked them into the groove and pulled up hard, swinging her left leg as high as she could. It met the shingles with a satisfying thwack, and then she rolled the rest of her body onto the roof.

She began to laugh, and then stopped to catch her breath before starting again. Her body was pleasantly warm, and the air was pleasantly cold, and Kady felt okay. She could have laid there forever, numb, but some annoying, older part of her brain told her to get up.

The roof was more slanted than she had realized, so Kady didn’t stand up completely. She half-crouched and climbed the roof with her hands and tips of her feet. The window was illuminated at the top and shone out to her like a beacon. She leaned her face against the glass and knocked. There was no response. Kady couldn’t see Mary in the room, but the bathroom door was ajar. Maybe the shower was running, and she couldn’t hear her. Maybe she really wasn’t going to let her in.

Kady hadn’t thought of what she would do if Mary didn’t open the window. On a whim, she grabbed the edge of the window and tried to shove it to the side. It went smoothly, with no resistance, and Kady almost lost her balance.

There was no screen, so Kady put her legs through the hole, and then carefully pushed herself through, taking care to land on her left foot.

“Mary?” she called.

She crept over to the bathroom and knocked on the door. The force pushed it open further, and Kady couldn’t restrain herself; she stepped inside.

A woman with stringy blonde hair was lying on the floor, wrapped in a bath towel, looking up blankly at the ceiling. A familiar needle was pushed into the vulnerable skin of her upper arm. Only, she wasn’t taking it out. She wasn’t moving at all, just staring at the ceiling. She didn’t even look at Kady.

Kady wasn’t sure how long she stood there, but eventually, she backed away and shut the door behind her. She walked over to the dresser and reached for the phone. She tried to guess the passcode a couple times, but none of them worked. The rectangular button at the bottom waited patiently for her. Emergency Call, it said. There was no emergency, but she pressed it anyway and dialed 911.

When it was done, and they were on their way, she sank to the floor and made a few slurping, whimpering noises, but no tears came. There was a pressure building in her chest that she recognized, and it wasn’t sadness.

She wondered distantly if they could even find Hannah, if she’d want her. If that day after Kady’s birthday when she had dropped her in front of an unfamiliar house, she had well and truly abandoned her. Maybe she’d never know. They would take her away and she would never hear from Hannah again.

Her hands were shaking as she climbed out the window and spread herself out on the roof. She wanted to close her eyes, but she kept them open. She would miss this view. Then sirens burst through the night, and red and blue flashing lights lit up the house.

As voices burst into the room, a bright flashlight shone on her and then a pair of hands roughly pulled her inside. She was met with several adult faces, all wearing varying expressions of concern and, on one, a slight tinge of fear. That pissed her off, so she growled and made a move like she was going to launch herself at him. Then there was more than just one pair of hands on her and she was on the ground with cloudy vision and there was something in her hand. She glanced down her arm, which was currently shoved against the ground, and in her palm, she saw a hint of something blue peeking out. It looked like a flower. When had she picked up a flower?

When they arrived at the hospital, the EMTs informed the staff that when they found her, she had been yelling uncontrollably. Kady didn’t remember that, but they didn’t care. For the next three days, she had to meet with a round of doctors that all talked to her like she was crazy and gave her looks of emphasized sympathy that made her want to vomit. A nurse took the drawstring out of the hood from her coat so Kady punched her in the face, and then she had to meet with even more doctors that no longer gave her looks of her sympathy and only talked to her like she was crazy.

Eventually Hannah came and put her in the front seat of her car and drove them far, far away from the Northern coast of Oregon.

 

Tomorrow was Kady’s first day of school in five months. 

Her backpack was packed with everything she owned, and it rested against the couch, within clear view. It never left her sight.

They were living in Southern California now. They had been there for a week, but Kady hated it already. It was hot and barren and hostile.

She kept the blue flower in her pocket and it was always warm against her skin, a constant reminder of its presence. Knowing it was there calmed her. Ever since it had appeared, she had felt different. She buried seeds in shallow dirt and tiny green sprouts poked out the next day. And she found seeds everywhere. In her pockets, in her backpack, in Hannah’s car, in the pages of her comic books. She took them and when they were ready, she planted them. Flowers were blooming in motel sinks for six-hundred miles.

She knew that wasn't normal. She recognized that, but that was it. She didn't think anything else about it. When it rained, her mind was clear, and when the sun shone brightly, she laid beneath it for hours and imagined herself sinking into the Earth and becoming a part of it. That, so far, had not happened.

But when the land was unhappy, she felt it. Southern California was lackluster and bitter, so Kady was apathetic and irritable. She knew they wouldn’t be there long, but she still planted a row of sunflowers in the yard behind their trailer. They were the biggest thing she had ever planted, and they grew slowly. She would not be there to see their petals open.

Hannah was in the only bedroom with her boyfriend. They had picked him up a couple weeks ago. His name was Everett. He was always smoking, and he liked to tell Hannah to shut up, but he never said anything to Kady. He hadn’t even acknowledged her existence. 

She had been spending a lot of time outside. But now she was on the couch, her bed, and she was trying to sleep. There was a pain in her mouth that stopped her. The voices she could ignore, but this throbbing pain had been going for several weeks and it never seemed to fade entirely. It radiated out from one of her back teeth. She had never been to the dentist, and by now, she knew better than to ask. It had to stop eventually, she figured.

“The kid’s a real brat,” a man’s voice said behind the wall, and Kady opened her eyes.

“The doctor’s think something’s wrong with her,” Hannah said. Her voice trembled like she wasn’t certain that was what she had meant to say.

“Ha!” he said. “There you go. Always listen to the doctors.”

There was silence for a moment. “Han, we should leave her. It’d be in everyone’s best interest. Drop her off at a fire station or some shit.”

“About nine years too late for that.” she said.

“Well, figure something out.” his voice was louder. “She’s starting to get on my nerves.”

Kady got up from the couch and stepped out of the trailer, slamming the door loudly. No one would care. She laid down next to the row of her hidden sunflowers and cried.

She woke in the early morning. Hannah had told her to take the bus to school. There was one about a mile away, so she walked there to wait for it. It was the city bus, not a school bus, so the stop nearest her school was still a thirty-minute walk. She sat at the back of the bus and watched the city zip by her. When her stop came up, the doors opened, and a couple people got on. Kady stood, but she didn’t walk forward. A minute passed before the doors shut and then the bus was pulling away from the curb and Kady felt herself sit back down.

The bus went for a couple more stops, and then several people stood at once, so Kady followed them out. She was downtown. 

There was a park across the street, so she walked over and found a bench. She sat down and surveyed her surroundings.

It was a large park, mostly just greenery and park tables, but there was a stage near the center and a playground up ahead to the right. The playground looked empty, but there were several bikes leaned against the slide, so Kady guessed someone was at the top.

“Hey.” a voice said. Kady pulled her eyes back to the space in front of her and saw a girl. She was lanky, taller than Kady, and her face was round and soft, with light freckles. Her dirty-blonde hair was messily braided, and she wore clunky, gold glasses.

“Hi,” Kady said.

The girl sat next to her and stuck out her hand. “I’m Ella.”

Kady turned toward her. She hadn’t talked to anyone her age in a long time, but she didn’t remember anyone being especially friendly. Was she messing with her? If Kady took her hand, would she erupt in laughter and reveal the great way she had just humiliated herself?

Ella made a noise of impatience. “Come on, I don’t bite.” 

There was an edge in her eyes that told Kady otherwise, but nevertheless, she cautiously took Ella’s hand. Ella grinned and shook it vigorously, before letting it fall and scooting in closer to Kady.

“Wanna have some fun?” she said.

Kady shrugged. “Sure, whatever.”

“Alright, see those bikes?” she said, pointing toward the playground. “The assholes who own them are stupid. They never chain them up.” She glanced back to Kady. “You have a favorite color?”

“Green,” Kady said, meeting her eyes firmly. This girl wasn’t going to intimidate her.

“Sweet. Me too. Lucky for you,” she said, craning her neck, “there’s two.” She sat back in the seat and punched Kady’s arm lightly. “Okay, you ready?”

“Are you saying you wanna steal the bikes?”

Ella pulled a face. “Well, not all of them, dumbo. Just two. Unless you can ride more than one bike at a time?” She stood and Kady came with her, unaware that Ella’s hand had latched onto her shirt. “Let’s go.”

She released Kady’s shirt and started walking toward the bikes. Kady stood in place. Ella must have realized she wasn’t following her, but she didn’t turn around.

Then she shrugged to herself and ran after her. The wind whipped one of Ella’s braids behind her and Kady saw her grinning.

When they were at the foot of the slide, Kady could hear very clear evidence that there were boys at the top. They sounded old, much older than her, and she felt a slight flicker of tension rise up in her. She had just wanted to sit on a park bench, alone. 

Ella grabbed the nearest green bike, propped up against the slide, and started to wheel it toward the sidewalk, out of the woodchips. The other one was on the ground, tilted on its side. She reached for the handlebars to pull it up toward her, but in her haste, her hand grasped something different, something that then emitted a very loud honk.

Ella whirled back around, her eyes wide, and silently motioned for her to move faster. She was on the sidewalk now, and she quickly hopped on the bike. Kady followed her and clambered onto the bike with a little more difficulty. She had never learned to ride.

“What the fuck?” someone said behind her. Kady glanced back and saw four, tall, teenaged boys standing at the bottom of the slide, looking more confused than angry. Then they noticed her and Ella, still gawking at them. “Oh, you little fuckers!” yelled one of them and started to get on his bike.

“Come on, Kady!” Ella said, and pushed off her foot, flawlessly kicking the gears into movement. Kady followed, both her and the bike wobbling. Once she started, though, it was easy enough. It helped that she was pedaling like a madman.

“We’re fucked,” she said to Ella once she had caught up to her. “There’s four of them! We should just give them back. I can’t even ride a bike!”

“You’re doing pretty good then!” Ella said, laughing. “Besides, didn’t you see they only had two left? It’s an even fight!”

Kady tried to sneak a look behind her. Sure enough, there were only two of them in pursuit. But they were gaining on them. She could hear their garbled yells.

She turned to face Ella again and had to swerve sharply to avoid hitting a trash can. They were out of the park now, riding on the streets of the bustling downtown. Or, the sidewalks.

Ella made a right down an alley faster than Kady could process, and so she kept riding straight. She glanced behind her and saw their pursuers only a few yards behind. She couldn’t double back, then. They would meet her there.

She turned right at the intersection and spotted another alleyway. She tucked inside and pedaled faster, hoping to evade them before they realized where she had gone. Suddenly, the gravity of where she was and what she was doing sunk in. Her feet were controlling a machine. She focused on their movements and made her arms and chest stiff, so she wouldn’t fall over. The ground was winking up at her, awaiting their inevitable collision. It seemed impossible, but she was doing it. She spared a glance down. Then, she crashed into a dumpster.

Only part of her felt the impact, the right half of her, but it still knocked her down, and the sharp metal of the gears cut into her lower leg. Blood mixed with the grease already on her skin.

She tried to get up, but the bike held her firmly down. She was about to slide out from beneath it, but then it started to lift away from her. Ella stood over her, grinning. Kady helped her push it forward, and once Ella leaned it against the offending dumpster, she extended a hand toward her. For the second time time that day, Kady took it.

“You started to think too hard, didn’t you?” she said.

“Yeah, I think so.” Kady said, and then realizing her choice of words, smiled. Ella started to laugh and Kady joined in. Her stomach hurt when they stopped, and Ella pointed at her. “No more thinking! Just do!”

She got back on her bike and waited while Kady did the same, then glanced back toward the street. “Looks like we lost them. Sorry about abandoning you, but I thought you were coming behind me!”

“It’s okay. I wouldn’t have blamed you for leaving me.”

“Nah. I wouldn’t leave my friend behind.” she said, looking at Kady. “Now, come on! I know somewhere we can go, just in case they aren’t off our tail.”

She flew into motion seamlessly again, and Kady followed, still wobbly, but better than before. 

They emerged at the end of the alley, somewhere Kady didn’t recognize. There was a store next to them with black, tinted windows and a brief metal staircase that led up to a wooden door, complete with a knocker. It looked more like a house than a store, but they were still downtown, so that wouldn’t make sense. Then she noticed a sign to the right of the stairs, obscured slightly, and lost interest. Just a store.

As they rode past it, Kady found her eyes drawn back to it, and she nearly lost her balance. She stopped, bracing the weight of the bike against her leg.

“Hey, Ella, wait a sec!” she said.

Ella didn’t even stop, just effortlessly wheeled around and stopped next to her. “What?” she asked, pushing her glasses up.

“What’s that?” Kady said, staring at the storefront.

“What?” Ella asked again.

“There,” Kady pointed. “That store. That sign. What is that?”

“Uh, Kady, I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. That’s a wall.” she said.

Kady tore her eyes away and looked at Ella. She seemed amused, with her eyebrows lifted slightly. “Right. Okay, sorry.”

She giggled. “You’re crazy. Come on.”

Before Kady followed her, she looked back to the sign. It was a chalkboard sign, as tall as her, but the words written on it kept shifting. The words moved; they refused to stay still, swaying from side to side or pulsating off the board entirely, looking so vivid Kady felt as if she would feel the letters if she reached out. As they moved, the font shifted with them. One second it was choppy block letters and the next sweeping calligraphy and the next neon bubble letters, and on and on, every few seconds. The words themselves read the same no matter how they looked:

_Enter One and All  
For Lovejoy Has The  
Answer to Your Call_

As she watched, an arrow appeared at the bottom of the sign and began to flash wildly, pointing toward the stairs. She might have gone, but Ella cried out at that moment, “Coming, crazy?” and Kady knew she had to follow her. Maybe she’d come back some other time and ask the owner about it. She was sure there was some boring, science-y explanation that would instantly turn it dull.

They rode through town, and Kady noticed Ella was deliberately slowing down for her. A surge of warmth spread throughout her. Soon, they had drifted into a residential area. They climbed the hill that went through the neighborhood, and at the top, Kady realized they had wandered into a very, very nice neighborhood. Those houses must have cost a fortune. The one to the right, overlooking the whole town—Kady bet she would almost be able see to see the trailer park from the top window—was bigger than everywhere Kady had ever lived, combined.

Ella stopped abruptly, and Kady braked sharply so as not to collide with her. She was eyeing the same house Kady had just been staring at. She hopped off her bike and walked it over to the porch, laying it down against the grass. She motioned for Kady to follow her.

“Do you know who lives here?” Kady asked.

She scoffed. “Nah, just that they’re usually gone. I hang out here during the days.” She walked over to the fence—it was literally a white picket fence, and Kady had to stifle the jealousy that rose up in her toward whoever lived here—and winked back at Kady, then smoothly hoisted herself up and over. It wasn’t a very tall fence.

Kady could just see the rim of her glasses over the top of the fence, but then Ella raised herself up to her tip-toes and leaned against it. Wiggling her eyebrows, she said, “They have a bomb-ass pool,” and then disappeared into the yard.

Looking up at the sky, Kady wondered what time it was. About noon, maybe. The Southern California heat she hated so much was reaching its peak. Her complete lack of a plan sunk in, for the first time today. Last night, when she had wept among her flowers, she had known she had to leave. Leave her mother, leave stupid Everett, leave the cigarette smell that hung everywhere in the trailer and made her cry. Beyond that, she didn’t know. She had been excited to go to school—she had been so good at long division, her fifth-grade math teacher had told her she was one of the quickest students she had ever taught. She had wanted to go to school and learn more math and make friends that would go to the movies with her and come to her birthday party.

But this morning that had all seemed like a fantasy. So, she shrugged and let it go. It didn’t matter that much, anyway. She wouldn’t go to school anymore and she wouldn’t live with her mom and Everett, or her next boyfriend, or her next. She’d make her way from there. Starting with this fence.

She grabbed the board near the top and pulled herself up, then used her other hand to steady herself at the top as she straddled both sides. The edges dug into her thighs, but she hardly felt it. Then she swung her other leg over and tried to land nimbly on her feet but stumbled slightly and felt her right ankle give out beneath her. She fell to the ground almost as an afterthought, barely registering the initial sear of pain.

The house was even more beautiful up close. From behind the fence it was one thing, but now, across the fence, she was an esteemed guest being welcomed into the warm arms of the house, who had been eagerly waiting for her to cross over. Windows covered in sunlight sparkled down at her, and the mismatched brown and tan bricks felt like something from a story—it was a house from a murder mystery, or the home of a nineteenth-century widow, or just somewhere where great and wonderful things could happen. Somewhere ripe for stumbling upon Narnia in a closet.

A beautiful garden sprawled out before her in the yard, with little pebble paths guiding her eyes from one patch of flowers to the next and stone benches to the sides, perfect to nap on. Behind the garden, Kady could see a red brick path and a hint of glittering water.

The sliding glass door opened, and Ella stuck her head out, dangling a key in the air. “Remember, there’s always a key beneath the mat,” she said, then noticing Kady was on the ground, slipped through the door completely. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Kady said, smiling. “I like this house.”

“Eh, it’s alright,” Ella said. “I’ve seen better.”

Kady stood and limped over to the porch, where Ella helped her climb on top. “You’ll get better at landing on your feet.”

She pushed the door open further and let Kady go in first. She stepped through gingerly and looked up in awe. The balcony of the second floor loomed above her and to the right she saw a huge staircase—made with marble, it looked like—and golden railings. Sunlight streamed in through the uncovered windows and lit up the deep chestnut floor. Pieces of art, tall and wide—as big as her—hung on the walls and stared down at her. Tasteful pieces of furniture spotted the room, but it was emptier than Kady would have expected. Maybe they hadn’t had any money left over to furnish their castle. Kady wanted to dance through the living room, twirl and pirouette and then collapse on the ground and make an angel. 

Ella seemed unfazed. She opened the fridge and pulled out the orange juice, taking a few gulps and then sticking it back inside. 

“Want some ice?” she said and Kady tugged her eyes away from the living room.

“Huh?” she said and then remembered her ankle. “Oh, sure.”

Ella tossed an ice pack to her and Kady leaned forward to catch it. “Here, I wanna show you the rooms,” she said, motioning with her hand as she started up the stairs.

“Alright,” Kady said. She held the ice in one hand and limped after her, tenderly at first, and then putting more weight on her foot. It cried beneath her, but she didn’t listen. She scaled the stairs in a minute or so, then walked down the carpeted hallway to the only room with the door wide open. Inside, there was a large four-poster bed, a floor-length mirror, one dresser—the kind that was taller than its width—a second one—the kind that was wider than its height—and a flat-inch T.V. Ella was by the bed, apparently being suffocated by some fluffy, purple monster…or at a second glance, she was simply wrapping herself in the bed’s duvet.

“Mmm, whaddya think?” she asked, standing in front of the mirror and pouting. “A good look?” she bent her front leg and turned her head, tensing her jaw slightly so her round face had a more prominent jawline. She glanced back at Kady, hanging tentatively at the doorway, and dropped the pose.

“C’mere,” she said and patted the bed. Kady took a seat next to her and cautiously put her foot on the pillow and held the ice against her swollen skin.

Ella laid back on the bed and then groaned. “God, what a child,” she said, pointing to the ceiling. A galaxy of stars flickered weakly above them, their dull green hue sticking out from the cream paint.

“Maybe it’s a kid’s bedroom,” Kady suggested. She had been in a bedroom that had those cheap, glow-in-the-dark stickers before when she was younger. She had promised herself if she ever had a bedroom of her own, she would cover it in those stupid stickers until she couldn’t see the wallpaper beneath. At night, it would glow brightly enough that she couldn’t be sad. She would name them when she couldn’t sleep, and when she could, she would sail through the sky to find them and meet the aliens that lived there.

“Nah. I know whose bedroom this is. We used to go to the same school. She was a real bitch,” Ella said rapidly, the words spilling out of her mouth as quick as they came into her head. “It was one of those fancy-ass private schools. There’re a lot of those here. Anyways, I was the only scholarship kid. And this bitch made sure everyone knew,” she said, drawing out “everyone”. “I was only there for a year. Everyone hated me, and then my dad died of cancer, so basically I was depressing the shit out of everyone, so they kicked me out.”

Kady remembered that Ella had told her she didn't know who lived here, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she reached over and grasped her hand. “Jesus,” Ella said, recoiling. “Cold, Kady.” However, she took Kady’s hand back in her own after a moment and Kady squeezed her the back of her palm.

They sat on the bed for a few minutes, undisturbed. Kady watched the stars, and she knew Ella did, too. Then, she tuned back into her body’s frequency and suddenly, Kady was extremely aware of the cold gnawing through her skin. She snatched her hand away from Ella and yanked the ice pack off her foot. “Oh, fuck,” she said, sighing.

“You’re such a weirdo,” Ella said, and Kady tossed the pack onto her stomach. “Ah!” she screamed, laughing simultaneously. They both started laughing, and then Ella stood, still wrapped in the duvet and made a show of strutting over to the closet. She flung the doors open dramatically and Kady was wracked with another fit of giggles.

She rifled through the closet with her back to Kady. “Hmm, yes, I think this one’s good,” she said, and whirled around, holding something long and absurdly yellow. There was a cartoonish face on the front, and a zipper ran all the way down the front.

“What—is that?” Kady said through chokes of laughter.

She gasped. “Who are you? It’s SpongeBob, you dumbo!”

“Sponge-who? Is that a toy?”

Ella threw the clothing at her, and Kady held it up critically. “I can’t believe they don’t have childhoods where you’re from.”

“More like they don't have nerds, Ella,” she said. Ella glared at her, but a smile managed to break through.

“SpongeBob is not for nerds! Now, put the onesie on, you heathen!” she commanded.

“Onesie? Is that what this is called?” Kady snickered as Ella continued to glare at her. “Alright, alright, I’m putting it on,” she said, standing up. 

“Yeah, you better,” Ella grumbled.

“By the way,” she said as she zipped it up, “only a nerd would say heathen.”

Down by the pool, Ella did a flip off the diving board. It started out as a front flip, but at some point, while she was in the air, it became a sideways free-fall that ended with a resounding crack as she smashed through the water’s surface.

“Damn,” she said as she emerged with a thick layer of hair across her face. She grinned at Kady. She had taken her braids out, and when she flipped her hair back, out of her face, it billowed out behind her, shining a golden blonde in the bright light. Kady grew warm, and it wasn’t just from the sun.

“Just so you know, if you don’t come in soon, I’m gonna drag you,” Ella called, leaning on her back and paddling with her feet. The purple duvet still floated behind her, and little pieces of purple fuzz spun around the pool.

Kady was sitting on the edge, dangling both her legs in the water. She had given up on icing her foot. The water looked inviting, and she was tempted to push off the ground and slip into it.

“You know how I don’t know how to ride a bike?” Kady said.

Ella laughed. “Well, I think you do now. But yeah.”

“I never learned how to swim, either.” Kady told her.

She didn’t blink, just swam over to her and gently splashed water onto her lap. “You’re not gonna learn up there, Kady.”

“I know,” she said, and then suddenly grinned. She climbed to her feet, aware of her injured foot, and scaled the diving board. Ella whooped as she did.

“That’s more like it!” she yelled.

Kady took a deep breath and launched herself int the air. She tried to fold her body down like Ella had done, and for a second, she thought she had pulled off the flip, but then her spine crashed into a barrier—definitely not water, it was too solid—and Kady’s mouth and nose were no longer breathing in oxygen. A burning began in her nose and she coughed, filling her lungs with even more water. Then, small, strong hands reached into her armpits and pulled her up toward the surface. When they broke through, Kady instantly began coughing and barely registered Ella pulling her toward the side.

She grabbed the concrete with both of her hands and squeezed it until her body quieted. Her mouth hurt, and her nose was painfully hot, and her eyes stung. Her whole body stung, actually. She glanced at Ella, who was staring at her, wide-eyed.

“Was that supposed to be a flip?” she asked.

Kady nodded.

She exhaled deeply and turned around, resting her back against the wall. “Well. I definitely like you.”

Kady grinned through the stinging.

They floated for a while, and Ella made Kady swim from one end to the other a couple times. They had stopped again and resumed floating quietly when Ella said abruptly, "I don't have a family."

Kady didn't say anything, and then Ella asked in a high voice, “Do you have a home?”

Kady didn’t need to look at her to know it was the first time she had been serious all day. It was all in her voice. “No. But I have somewhere we can go, if you want,” Kady told her, because that was what she had really been asking.

Ella didn’t say anything and Kady looked at her. She was staring at something in the air that Kady couldn’t see. She could tell the moment whatever it was faded, and then they were looking at the same blue sky again. Ella didn’t say anything, and she didn’t look at Kady, but she nodded. It was a small and silent gesture, and Kady almost missed it. Later, she wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t been looking at her precisely at that moment.

 

Hannah was gone when the two girls arrived in the doorway of the trailer. Everett was sitting on the couch with a beer and something that looked like a cigarette but smelled different. 

He lazily glanced over to the door. She watched recognition flash in his eyes and then fury slowly build up, until it spilled out.

“Get out!” he yelled. “Until your whore mother comes back, you don’t live here!”

He crossed the room and heaved a big puff of bitter alcohol and something sweet into their faces before slamming the door. The lock clicked loudly.

“Marijuana,” Ella said.

“I don’t know what that is,” Kady said.

Ella shrugged. “Yeah, me neither, really.” She didn’t say anything about Everett or Hannah, which made something warm bloom in Kady’s chest again. 

So, she took her down to her garden. They sat cross-legged on the recently tilled land and Kady carefully took a handful of dirt into her right hand.

“Give me your hand,” she said, and Ella did. She turned her hand over and let the dirt spill into Ella’s palm, then she reached into her pocket and took out a tiny seed.

There had been seeds in her pocket ever since the hospital. Sometimes she put them there, and sometimes they appeared.

Kady placed the seed on top of the dirt and then looked seriously at Ella. “Cover it,” she told her.

Ella looked more skeptical now—her thin eyebrows were making their way up her forehead, but she listened to Kady and gingerly pushed the seed down and covered it with a layer of dirt.

Kady stared intently at the cupped dirt. There was no uncertainty in her mind. Ella’s watchful eyes held her firmly and wouldn’t let her back down. And she didn’t want to. 

Ella opened her mouth to say something but stopped suddenly, her mouth hanging wide open and her eyes rapidly expanding. There was something peeking out from the surface. It was pushing its way through the dirt and slowly unfurling into a light blue flower.

It kept growing, until it was as tall as Kady’s index finger. Its green stem bristled in the wind, and its petals danced, winking up to the two young girls.

Ella stared at the fully-grown flower she was now holding in her hand and said, “Was that magic?”

Kady nodded. She couldn’t tell what Ella was thinking. Her voice sounded normal. She kept watching her and noticed she was trembling. Her elbows, her hands, her knees—all over. She leaned forward and carefully lifted the flower from the dirt, tugging softly at its impossibly deep roots. Then she tucked it behind Ella’s ear, brushing her tangled hair out of the way as she did.

The movement seemed to spur Ella back into motion. Kady could already tell Ella was the kind of person who almost never stopped moving.

“You have to teach me,” Ella said.

So Kady tried. They practiced for hours, and Kady made a dozen more blue flowers grow. She didn’t know how to explain the sensation when she just knew the magic would work. It built up in her and overflowed and she couldn’t have stopped it if she wanted to.

Eventually, Ella gave up for the night. Hannah hadn’t come back, but Kady needed blankets, so she snuck in through the bathroom window she always kept unlocked and grabbed some from Hannah’s room.

Her and Ella bundled up and fell asleep on the patch of dirt. When Kady awoke to the quietly bright early morning sun, she was surrounded by sunflowers. They grew between her legs and against her spine and next to her face. And they were tall, covering the two girls in a yellow canopy. She laid on the ground and watched them sway in the wind, not questioning their swift appearance. She was simply grateful. 

 

For the next month, a routine emerged for the first time in Kady’s life. Each morning she met Ella at the bus stop near the trailer park and they would spend the next ten hours walking around the town, going to movies, buying outrageous amounts of candy, and eating ice cream on the street curb and watching cars drive through town. And every day, Kady would take her back to her garden and they would sit and do magic.

Surrounded by the sunflowers, anything felt possible. It made them feel powerful, and not at all silly for attempting the make-believe. Kady soon added roses and tulips and peonies to her garden. Ella watched her, as her own hands remained empty and lifeless. Kady had tried explaining how she did it a hundred different ways, but it was a slippery and stubborn concept, and because Kady had opened her body to it, she understood it was not meant to be explained to those who could not wield it. 

Kady did not share this with Ella, but even if she had, it would have had no effect on her. She knelt and stared at her outstretched hands, filled with dirt, for hours—remaining still long after her legs must have gone numb and her arms begun to ache. As the days ticked by, she grew more determined and even when Kady wasn’t trying to teach her magic, she was still trying to summon it. When they walked through the park, Kady saw the intense stares she cast at all the plants they passed.

This morning, she had abruptly flung the dirt she held in her palm toward Kady and started yelling at her. “Fuck you, Kady! This isn’t fair! Why can’t I do it?”

Kady didn’t answer and she asked again, in a much softer voice, “Why can’t I do it?” She wasn’t talking to Kady that time.

They were downtown now, exchanging a word or so occasionally. Kady stared bitterly at the sidewalk as they walked. She was starting to wish she had never shown Ella what she could do. It was almost all she talked about anymore, and when she wasn’t, she was giving Kady impatient, condescending looks. She wondered sometimes if she hadn’t shown Ella her magic that first night, if they would have ever seen each other again. It had been lonely being the only one who knew about magic, but it was even lonelier now that someone knew and hated her for it.

She heard Ella gasp, but she didn’t look up. Ella’s nails reached out for her arm and dug roughly into her skin.

“Kady, what’s that?”

Kady peeled her hand off her and then looked up, toward whatever she was so excited about.

It was that store, the one with the weird, moving sign in front of it. Lovejoy’s. They had passed it almost every day, but Kady had learned to ignore it. She hardly noticed it anymore and Ella never noticed it.

“That place?” Kady said, pointing toward the door.

“Yes, Kady, the one with the fucking magical sign in front of it.” Ella said, reaching out again and pulling her forward, toward the entrance.

“You can see it?” Kady asked. She tried to control her tone, but the unsolicited hand that grasped her shoulder put an edge into it.

Ella whirled on her. Her blue eyes stared down at her darkly, and while she didn’t move any closer to her, she seemed to grow larger. It made Kady think of the toads she had used to spot in the creek behind her school. They made themselves look big when they were scared.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Ella said, and the words bristled in the air, daring Kady to reach out and touch them. She watched Ella silently and they fell away. 

Her frown righted itself, so abruptly it was eerie, and she pulled Kady up the stairs. “Do you know what’s inside?” she asked.

Kady shook her head and Ella’s grin widened. She tried the door, ignoring the knocker, and disappeared inside. Kady caught the edge of the door before it closed and followed her.

The inside of the store looked like any other antique store. There were shelves and tables filed with various trinkets: candles, busts, empty picture frames and filled ones. The floor was covered in an odd array of mix-matched rugs of all different colors. She looked up and realized the ceiling was a mirror; to the left she saw Ella standing over a table, touching something. She squeezed herself between the narrow rows until she was standing behind her.

She was holding a necklace. A deep red jewel adorned the middle of the short chain, and that was what Ella clasped in her hand. Kady watched her reflection in the glass of the table. For once, her face looked entirely unguarded. But her eyes and mouth were not soft; they were simply frozen. Everything important was happening in her head, and Kady could only guess what she was thinking. When she tapped her on the shoulder, she didn’t move, or even flinch.

“Ella?” she asked. She didn’t respond. Her eyes were still riveted by the jewel.

Kady rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she muttered and left her side, wandering toward the front of the store. There was a counter where a counter might normally be, but it was empty—no cash register—except for a white, three-ring binder. It looked like the kind of binders her teachers had used to have. She reached out to lift the cover but before she could, the binder slid backwards, away from her. 

“That, child, is the one thing within these walls not for sale,” a high voice said. Kady recoiled, quickly snatching her arm back.

A man came into view from the shadows. She saw a chair behind him, where he might have been sitting. But as of a few seconds ago, she would have sworn there was no one there.

He was middle-aged, tall and thin, with a hunched neck but a straight back. He was dressed in a striped grey suit that might have looked very nice except for the sewn-up tears and little, fraying holes dotting the sleeves. “Yes, that even includes me, and you, and your friend over there,” he continued. His eyebrows lifted slightly as he glanced in Ella’s direction. “Hmm, especially your friend,” he said.

Kady forgot her fear from a moment ago and stepped up to the counter. “Well, I’m not for sale.”

“If you say so. I, myself, most absolutely am. Now, what can I do for the little girl—who is not for sale—and her friend?” his voice was a little too high, with just a little too much of a dramatic flourish for Kady to take him seriously. He spoke with a stutter, too.

“I don’t think she’s my friend,” Kady told him with her arms still propped up on the counter.

He nodded grimly and gave her a close-lipped smile. “I don’t think she’s anyone’s friend,” he said nonchalantly. As if he was talking about the weather, and not an eleven-year-old he’d never met before.

“Why?”

He glanced back to Ella, cradling the necklace in her palm, and opened his mouth, about to spill secrets he shouldn’t know, Kady thought, but instead, he grimaced and cried out. “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Kady watched him calmly. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“No, child, I am not. A rather wearisome curse has befallen me—shit!—and I can only tolerate it for so long, you understand.”

“Sure,” Kady said, and removed her arms from the counter.

“I realize you are a child, so I’ll control myself, but it’s oh so frustrating—really, you can’t imagine. It just drives you crazy,” he said, shaking his head and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Well, what’s the curse?”

He exhaled deeply. “I have been cursed to speak with an irrepressible stutter, imposed upon all words except those commonly regarded as swear words. You can understand then, my outburst. The joy of uttering more than single syllable without stammering is greatly underappreciated. An unusual curse, but the offending magician was a tad immature. Immensely powerful, though. This seven-year-old could change the color of your clothes, right on your body!” He shook his head again, but this time in awe. “Extraordinary. But when I nabbed a small—harmless—trinket from his parents, they sicced him on me! Can you imagine? Like a bloodhound.”

He looked down at the binder sadly. “As a result of my current impediment, business has been suffering. I find people less inclined to listen to me than they normally are.”

“Sure,” Kady said again, barely listening. “So, you knew a seven-year-old who could change colors?”

“Indeed,” he said.

“What would you think about an eleven-year-old who can make plants grow?” she asked hesitantly.

“Oh, a God.” he said. “Undoubtedly.”

A familiar hand presented itself on Kady’s sleeve. She turned to see Ella, standing behind her. The necklace hung around her neck and when it caught the light, the jewel shimmered, but Kady still thought it was ugly. Very, very ugly.

“Ah, an interesting choice, child,” Lovejoy said, now talking to Ella, “But I shan’t say anymore—bad for business to make moral judgements—so, how will you be paying today?” He opened the binder and leafed through, handing it over to them on a blank page. “Upfront or credit?”

Ella ignored him and tugged Kady toward the door. The bell rang as she pushed it open, and Kady glanced back helplessly to Lovejoy. He looked back at her, his eyes flashing in painful resignation as he closed the binder. He raised a hand in farewell to her as the door closed behind the two girls.

 

Kady stood outside the bus stop and waited. It had been a week since Lovejoy’s shop and a week since she had seen Ella. He had been a very strange man, and while she felt bad for him, with his curse and all, and that Ella had stole from him, she didn't particularly think he knew what he was talking about. She certainly wasn't a God. 

Everyday, now, Kady had waited for Ella to show-up, and everyday when she had given up, she had gone home and slept on the couch. She wasn't sleeping at all during the nights, and no more than an hour at a time during her naps. The pain in her back tooth kept her awake.

Today, when the bus pulled up, she got on. She needed to find her. She didn’t know how, or even why, but her sudden disappearance had made Kady angry and it was growing heavy in her without release.

She got off at their stop, the one across from the park. It was still early morning, so the park was mostly empty, except for a few adults walking their dogs. She found a picnic bench and sat down. She would sit and wait and if Ella showed up, she would confront her.

Slowly, without realizing, her eyes started to droop, and she lowered her head to the wooden table. 

Voices pierced through her empty dreams some time later, and she picked her head up to see a group of teenage boys sitting at the next table over. The morning fog and chill had vanished, and the sun was once again visible in the sky.

She watched the boys for a minute, still not quite fully awake, before one of them glanced her way. He returned her gaze blankly, and then his eyes narrowed.

“Hey!” he called, and his friends stopped talking and followed his gaze. “You’re my brat sister’s friend, right?”

She shook her head.

He got up and started walking over to her. “Yeah, you are. You stole our bikes.”

Kady’s mouth parted slightly. “Is Ella your sister?” she asked.

“Sadly,” he said. “I had to pay for a new bike myself. That was my weed money.” 

His friends guffawed. 

“I think you should probably give my friend’s bike back, yeah?” he jerked his thumb behind him.

Kady looked between the two of them. So, Ella had lied; she had a family after all. And she’d had Kady thinking she was some sort of badass this whole time, when she was just a little girl who stole from her brother. The anger shifted in her stomach, and Kady smiled in grim awareness of it. “Do you see a fucking bike?” she asked him.

“Oh, shit,” a boy behind him said, laughing.

Ella’s brother smirked. “You better run then, kid. ‘Cause we got bikes.” 

She looked to the bench behind them and saw several bikes leaning against it. Ella’s brother was standing next to her now, at the edge of the table, grinning down at her. He reached toward her.

She was up in a flurry of movement, pushing herself away from the bench and his grasping hands. She made it a few steps away before she felt him on her, pulling her backward. She rolled her shoulder back violently, and his fingers loosened and fell away, but without the force of him holding her back, she flew forward and fell onto the gravel.

The little pebbles burrowed into her palms and knees, but she scrambled to her feet and ran toward the street. They wouldn’t follow her into a store.

A long, rectangular fountain stretched across the width of the field, acting as a border between city and park. The water was shallow but wide, and raised stone blocks stood in the middle as a place to cross. But Kady was moving too fast to bother with stepping stones. 

When she reached the water, she stepped in and ran a few steps—it barely came to her knees—before she felt hands grab onto her again—or not her, but the back of her shirt. It pulled her back and she lost her footing, slipping. Her face rapidly hurtled toward the firm concrete of the sidewalk. There was a thump and then a bitter, copper taste flooded her mouth. Her tongue touched something lost in the blood, and as she spit out the mouthful, a small tooth was mixed in with it. She ran her tongue along her teeth, and it slipped into a gap: her left front tooth. Or the place it used to be.

“Fuck, fuck,” someone muttered behind her. “Are you okay?”

Kady pushed off the edge of the fountain and climbed to feet. She was drenched, and her clothes hung heavy against her. She turned around and saw Ella’s brother standing in the water. His eyes bulged when he saw her face. She smiled so he could see her prominent missing tooth. She wished the one that hurt had been knocked out.

“Jesus, are you okay, kid?” he said, but didn’t get any closer to her. He was about to bolt, she knew.

“Look,” she said, “Tell me where you live so I can talk to Ella, and I won’t tell my parents a seventeen-year-old boy beat me up. They’re very important people.”

“I’m fourteen,” he said, and suddenly looked very small and pale.

“Whatever.” she said. “The address?”

 

The bus took her to the bottom of the hill and no further. It didn’t matter. She knew where she was going.

When she stood at the top she stared at the house facing her. She didn’t check the number, but she knew it was the right one. She scaled the fence like Ella had shown her, and this time, she didn’t fall.

The sliding glass door was unlocked but the living room was silent. The house seemed a thousand times bigger now that she was alone inside it. She made her way up the stairs and walked down the hallway to the last door. It wasn’t open, so Kady pushed it open without knocking. Ella was lying on the bed, her arms splayed to the sides, like she had collapsed and couldn’t be bothered to readjust.

Kady stood in the doorway silently for a moment before Ella rolled her head to the side and looked at her.

“Oh, you.” she said blankly.

Kady stared at her for a moment, silently. "So, you live here then? You have a brother, a family? A home?” Her voice gradually grew louder and louder.

Ella didn’t say anything but continued looking at her.

“Did you have fun fucking with me this whole time? Laughing at me with all your bitchy, rich friends?”

A visible ripple of emotion passed across her face. She set her jaw and swung her feet off the side of the bed, so she was facing Kady.

“You were the one fucking with me! Shoving your magic in my face, showing off, again and again! You liked that you were special! That I couldn’t do it.” Ella took a deep breath and reached below her shirt’s hemline, pulling out a necklace. The same necklace she had taken from Lovejoy’s shop. She watched Kady eye it and smiled. “Well, guess what. You’re not the only special one anymore.”

She paused, but Kady was silent, so she continued. “This necklace is powerful. I felt it when I first saw it. It speaks to me. Cares for me,” she said, her voice wobbling slightly. “I told it I wanted to be alone. And look around, you see anyone? It’s been a week. My parents suddenly left on a trip, and my brother’s gone, too.”

Kady looked at her—really looked at her. Her eyes had the usual tough glint to them, but past that, she saw something she hadn’t noticed before: desperation. The determination that had sustained her for the long month they had known each other and finally caved in, given way to longing and desperation, weakened her.

“Is that it? That’s not magic, that’s a coincidence.” she said. “You’re pathetic. You couldn’t live not having one thing? Look around you, Ella, look at where you live! My mom left me behind and forgot about me! You have everything! All I can do is make plants grow! You don’t need that, too.”

The necklace still raised the hairs on her arms, but Ella was suddenly just a little girl longing for what she didn’t have, and Kady wasn’t as angry anymore.

She stood. “You’re right. I don’t need that.” She grabbed Kady’s hands in her own, squeezing them tightly as her nails dug in—accidentally or not, Kady didn’t know. Then the room around them disappeared and there was a second during which Kady stood on nothing, surrounded by black, and then she was on her knees in her garden.

Ella was standing next to her, but she looked slightly disoriented herself. She tucked her hair behind her ears and looked down at Kady. “Who cares about plants? I spent all this time on stupid plants. Who gives a shit? I can do better things. It showed me how.”

She held out a hand to Kady and she took it, pulling herself up next to her. “Watch,” Ella said and turned toward Kady’s garden. She lifted her hands and motioned clumsily, and as Kady looked on, a flame appeared in the dirt. With another motion, the flame grew bigger, and attached itself to the nearby flowers. It grew taller as it engulfed the entire garden.

As Kady watched, she felt nothing. Like all her emotions were being sucked out, but nothing was replacing them, not even the familiar anger. She felt empty.

When it was done and there was nothing left to burn, the fire gradually settled down and flickered out of existence. Kady saw Ella staring at her in her peripheral vision but she didn’t look toward her. She thought she saw a yellow petal float away from the ashes, but the wind took it before she was certain.

“What if you didn’t have the necklace, Ella? Your magic is fake. It belongs to that necklace, not you. You couldn’t do anything without it, remember?” Kady said, and then turned on her heel and went inside, leaving Ella alone in the dark, next to the charred corpses of all the things Kady had given life to for the past month.

She made her bed on the couch and tried to ignore Hannah screaming at Everett from the other room. Her back tooth was throbbing again, unbearably, now that she had nothing else to distract her. She touched it gingerly with the tip of her tongue and she felt it move in her gum. It was loose. It must have been from when she fell.

Sitting up, she decided what she had to do. What she had decided a month ago when she had slept on the bed of sunflower seeds and tried to keep warm. Ella hadn’t been her friend, and Hannah wasn’t her mother. There was no point staying near either of them.

Kady went into the kitchen and took the bottle of whiskey on the counter, then went into the bathroom and locked the door. She unscrewed the lid and took a large gulp. It tasted even worse than it smelled, and she coughed for a couple of seconds as the bitter taste sunk into her mouth and gums and coated her tongue. She took a few more gulps, as much as she could bear, and then she set the bottle down.

The light in the bathroom was already dim, and it constantly flickered, but Kady could still see the blackness dotting her tooth. She pushed it again with her tongue, as far as it would go, and she let out a breath as it almost touched the roof of her mouth. It was looser than she thought. Even knowing that, her heart still pounded as she stuck her thumb and forefinger into her mouth and grasped the tooth between them.

She didn’t scream, her voice was too paralyzed, but she whimpered softly as she withdrew her fingers and the tooth with them. She tossed it in the trash can, and then rinsed her mouth with water. Her vision spun and she grasped the wall to steady herself. Her mouth was stinging fiercely and she thought about curling up on the floor and crying, or running into Hannah’s arms, but she told the pain to quiet, and after a minute, it did. She wasn’t sure if that was due to magic or the alcohol, but either way, she was grateful.

Outside, in the living room, the T.V. was on. As Kady put the bottle back on the counter, she glanced at it. A woman holding a microphone was directly in front of the camera, and behind her, there was an ambulance and several police cars. She was talking and Kady half-listened, "...A teenage boy was hit by a car outside of Day's Market this evening. We have been told he is in critical condition. He was crossing the street on his bike when a driver, forty-one-year-old Mark Connors, hit him. Police suspect possible intoxication as the cause. But what makes this accident truly heartbreaking, is we have identified the victim, and while we cannot name him, he was the son of wealthy real estate moguls, Tom and Lindsey Livingston, who died last night when their private plan went down. The cause is of yet unknown, but we will keep you updated."

Kady stopped listening as she packed. Her backpack held everything she owned, but even after she shoved a blanket and some protein bars into it, it was still light. But light was good, because she had a mile walk to the bus stop. It was the same path she took every day, but when she reached it, she crossed the street to the other side. An identical bus stop waited for her, except this one was the North bus. She had never ridden it before, and she didn't know where it would take her, but she would ride it until the end of its line, and then she would find a way to go even further.

As she waited, she replayed Ella burning down her garden in her mind. She focused on her hands.


	3. Chapter 3

Julia looked up. A large Victorian home was rooted firmly to the ground. As if it had always been there. It _had_ always been there. She had passed it on her walks to school.

Her hands were steady as she pushed the piece of paper into her pocket. She did not remember when she had last slept. Not last night. She had come home from the hospital and started reading _The Chatwins_. Now she was here. Virginia Street.

The note had said the marked house. There was nothing noticeably significant about this house, no so-called “marks” Julia could see. But the air around it shimmered and vibrated, and the closer she got to it, the more noticeable it became. She felt like she was vibrating, too.

She was at the porch now. Three steps between her and the door. She had no idea who or what was behind it. And she was afraid. Not of danger, but of reality. She had read _The Chatwins_ last night. At least half-way through. And she had been forced to confront the truth: it was nothing more than a children’s book. Yes, an old one, which made it seem more mysterious, but it was written for children all the same. English schoolboy Martin Chatwin happens upon his old school teacher just when his wealthy family’s luck is down, and kindly Mr. Plover grants Martin and his siblings sanctuary at his Irish estate until their parents can sort out their finances. The only mention of magic as of yet is when half of Martin’s underwear vanishes overnight, and he blames it on witchcraft. It was ridiculous.

But the stubborn part of her, deep inside her core, refused to let go just yet. Julia didn’t give up or half-ass things, she saw them through. So, she didn’t knock on the door, but instead reached straight for the handle. It surrendered gently beneath her palm and the door swung open, letting out a groan that resonated throughout the house.

No one appeared, so Julia took a step inside.

A staircase was ahead and to the right, and in front of her was a living room. There were two sleek sofas arranged in an L and a flat-screen T.V. on the wall across it. It was empty, so Julia turned the corner and saw a large kitchen, complete with an island counter in the middle. She was about to step across onto the tiled kitchen floor when there was a sharp click to her right and then something was swinging out towards her. She recoiled, her heart pounding heavily and her hands grasping out toward the counter.

It was a door. The man from the hospital stood in the opening. He was wearing a different sweater, now, purple this time, but other than that, he appeared the same. Except for his eyes, Julia noted. They looked like they had seen as much sleep as her own had.

“Hello, Julia. I’m glad you came,” he said, and his smile reached his eyes. “I’m sorry I was cryptic. But we can never know who to trust. I’m Pete, by the way.” He held out his hand. It was a friendly gesture, but half-hearted, like he expected her to refuse it. She wanted to, partly out of spite, and partly because she felt he was connected to Kady’s sudden disappearance. But she wanted answers, and generally she had found life was more receptive to the _nice_ , pretty girls than the mean ones.

She took his hand, and then he stepped aside to allow her through the doorway. It was a narrow room, stretching out horizontally, and there were several windows, but all of them were boarded up. She had noticed that when she was younger. It had been a source of much imagination for her.

The only furniture in the room was a long table. It reached from wall to wall and looked to seat seven people. There was room for an eighth chair, the head of the table closest to her, but the space was empty. The other seats were taken, and Julia briefly glanced at them as all their eyes mercilessly bore into her like a single hostile entity. There was a twenty-something man with blonde hair in a ponytail, a dark-skinned woman covered in tattoos with her arm draped over his chair, a suburban-esque middle-aged man in a blue button-down, and a teenage boy—maybe even a pre-teen—who sat with his arms crossed and the kind of resting defiance in his eyes that burned deeply within most teenagers. And at the end, Julia saw with a jolt, was the barista from the coffee shop. Marina. She was chewing a thick wad of bubblegum and her large hoop earrings shook as she turned her head toward Julia and then away again, to the woman at the end of the table. She was clearly the person in charge, because one by one, all the remaining eyes flickered to her. Pete left from behind Julia and took the only empty seat, next to Marina.

The woman was at least fifty, but artfully applied make-up softened the years on her face. Dirty blonde hair fell in loosely curled waves to her shoulders, and a wispy fringe swept across her face. There was not a hint of grey to be seen. She was wearing a long-sleeved, green blouse that Julia thought was designer.

She was looking at Julia, and a warm smile appeared on her face as she stood. She beckoned her forward. “How wonderful it is for you to join us, Julia! Marina here has told us quite a bit about you.”

Julia glanced at Marina, but she blew a bubble and kept her eyes straight at the wall, her expression impassive.

“You have a great many questions, I’m sure, but let me start with myself. My name is Ethel. This is my home, but as is it all of theirs,” she gestured toward the table, “and soon, yours as well. This is Virginia, but you may call it what you desire: a safehouse, shelter, haven…”

“Do you mean the house is Virginia?” Julia asked. “Or the street?”

“Both, as it happens. I believe houses are like people, and so to do they have names and character. This house goes by Virginia.”

Julia nodded slowly. “Is this some weird, cult shit? Because you can have your book back. I don’t want to be involved.”

The boy snorted, and Pete glared at him. “We’re not a cult, Julia,” he said.

Ethel held up a hand. “This is a society. A small, tightly knit one. Spots are not available to just anyone. To those welcome here, we are the Perceptive. And to others, we are simply ordinary people, someone you might encounter on the street. You will always be welcome here, as you have the same gift as us, but whether or not you choose to stay is entirely up to you.”

“Why do you think I’m—one of you? And how did you find me?”

“Marina saw you for what you were when you first started frequenting her café. That is one of her talents, she can sense magic on anyone,” Ethel explained, and Julia felt shivers run along her forearms. This was the first time anyone in this room had said magic.

“That’s not the whole story,” the boy said snidely and Marina popped her bubble.

“Shut up, brat,” she hissed.

“What does that mean?” Julia said, looking to Ethel. 

She shook her head dismissively. “Pay their antics no mind. It’s irrelevant to you. Your next question,” she said before Julia could continue, “is what are the Perceptive, correct? Well, as I said, we are a society. We are knowledgeable about magic, about its existence and its practice. And we are the only ones in the world.”

Julia looked around again. “Really? You’re mostly all white, seem privileged…all American, right?”

The man with the ponytail lifted his hand. “I’m Australian.”

She nodded to him. “Okay, and Australian. And you’re the only ones in the whole world? How can you know?”

Ethel laughed but Marina cut in. “Believe me, if there was someplace better than this shitshow, I’d be there.”

“Before today, this would have been something even your wildest imagination could not conjure up,” Ethel said, “Why are you so quick to think that there exist more than the few people you see here? If we weren’t so rare, this would all be much less of a novelty, don’t you think? Only God knows why we were the ones chosen.”

“That’s some classic white people B.S.,” the boy said. He was quickly becoming the most incongruous aspect of this whole scene.

“Connor, quiet. You’re still in high school,” the middle-aged man told the boy sternly.

“Excuse me?” Connor snapped. “Like your diploma’s gotten you anything other than some dumbass office job. I can know things about the real world, too, even if it makes you uncomfortable because I know more of this shit than all of you combined.”

“Connor,” Ethel said, and he slumped back in his chair.

Julia felt like she was going crazy. Yesterday morning she had been casually suicidal and hardly more than twenty-four hours later, she was standing in front of a woman who claimed she and the people who sat with her were magical. Or understood magic. Either way, she was only certain of one thing Ethel had said so far: this was far beyond anything she would have ever dreamt.

“It’s been a while since we’ve had a new member,” Ethel said. “I always forget what a shock it is. Take all the time you need, Julia. We can try to answer whatever questions you still have.”

“Have you started reading the book yet?” Pete asked.

Julia nodded. “It just seems like an old kid’s book. Like the Harry Potter of a century ago.”

“Yeah, that’s basically what it is.” Pete said. “But, that note by the Author? It’s only in that book. There weren’t many copies ever printed, but I’ve tracked down every other one, and that’s the only one with it. A little strange, but I mean, you could live with it. Only Ethel bought it from an old vintage store, thought it was interesting, so she went back the next day to ask the owner about it, and he was gone. His whole shop, too. Like it’d never been there.” His voice grew ardent as he spoke until he was fully gesturing with both of his hands. “Now, that’s a little harder to ignore.”

“He’s obsessed,” Connor said to Julia, then looked to Pete. “Re-read it a thousand times, right, bro? Find anything useful yet?”

“No,” he said calmly, and Connor rolled his eyes and turned away. “But now that Julia’s here, maybe she’ll help me.”

Julia didn’t know what to say to him. She was still processing everything. She was tired, and it was honest-to-god exhaustion, not the kind of tired she got after being awake for five minutes and wanting to slip back under the covers. And she wanted to ask about Kady. Pete had told her at the hospital that she wasn’t important, but she seemed important. Meeting a mysterious girl on the same day Julia’s whole world was shattered seemed a little too coincidental.

“What do you say, Julia? Will you stay at Virginia and help Pete out?” Ethel asked, smiling kindly again. “Just for the afternoon, of course.”

All the eyes turned toward her for what felt like the millionth time and Julia met the only familiar pair she knew. Marina blew another bubble and watched Julia, her eyes judging and assessing. The bubble popped noisily, and Julia turned away. Marina was clearly no ally.

“Alright,” Julia told everyone and then directed her gaze toward Ethel. She didn’t trust her, but she was indisputably the leader. “But I want to see some magic.”

 

“She’s been what?” Julia exclaimed. “What the fuck?”

“Calm down, God. I’m sure it’s not the first time someone’s slipped something in your drink. Back me up, Pete.” Marina said from the couch. Her legs were crossed and propped on the coffee table. Pete, Julia, and Connor were sitting on the carpet, around that same table. Tattooed girl and ponytail man were sitting on the other couch, and Ethel had gone with white dad to make tea for everyone.

Pete looked apprehensively toward the ground, his fingers twisting the sleeve of his sweater. “I was against it, you know. It’s just an—an easy way to be sure. It’s totally innocuous.” 

“Innocuous? You drugged me!”

Marina made a noise of disagreement. “Yeah, Pete, I wouldn’t quite say that. If Julia weren’t one of us, she might’ve been violently ill for one, maybe two weeks. Tops.”

Ethel and white dad re-entered the room at that moment. She was carrying a round tray with a mug for each of them.

Julia stood up. “I’m out of here. This is crazy. You can’t just—drug people! You’re all delusional!”

“Wait a moment, Julia,” Ethel said, motioning for Marina to move her feet and then setting the tray down on the table. “I’m sorry you found out like that. Marina should have waited to tell you. You’ll understand one day, I promise. It’s one of the best methods we have.”

“What about your _talent_?” Julia said to Marina. “I thought you could just ‘detect’ people or whatever vague shit you said.”

“Yeah, but I’m not infallible, bitch,” Marina retorted. “You always get the right answer?”

“Heard of math?” Julia said, raising her eyebrows.

Marina’s eyes narrowed, and she cracked her knuckles, but Ethel spoke before she could respond. “You wanted to see magic, Julia. We can show you that now, and then you can decide if you want to leave.”

Pete spoke then. “The—uh—medication that Marina gave you, it helped you, Julia. Opened your eyes. You probably saw something unusual, something that made you question your sanity. Without that, would you have even showed up today?”

Julia thought of the painting and sighed. “Okay, I’ll wait.”

“Good, good.” Ethel smiled and nodded her head toward the floor pointedly. Julia sat down again, crossing her legs and putting her hands in her lap. Everyone reached forward for a mug until there was only one left. They all looked to Julia.

She grumbled as she took it and set it down on the carpet next to her. “You’re all batshit if you think I’m actually going to drink that.”

Ethel took the empty tray and put it beneath the table and then brushed a hand against the surface, although it was already clean. “Connor,” she said, and he leaned forward, over the table. From his pocket, he pulled out a small, round candle, and then a lighter. He clicked it on and held it over the wick, and after a moment, it caught. A tiny, glowing flame appeared. He waited a moment until it grew bigger.

Julia was aware of the intent gazes fixed on him and the candle. Why? Didn’t they see this all the time?

He brought his face in close to the candle, so his nose was only a centimeter away, and then he raised his hand and held his index finger sideways, motioning it forward. The flame surged forward so abruptly that Julia didn’t notice until it receded that it had turned a bright pink.

The effect was almost identical to an experiment Julia had once did in her AP chem class, but seeing it like this, outside of a lab and surrounded by people who so desperately believed in it, Julia felt goosebumps cover her arms. “Make it turquoise,” she told him. He made the same movement and the flame flared up briefly as it turned turquoise and then settled back down again.

He stuck his tongue out and smirked at Julia. “I can also,” he said, making another movement with his hand, this time using all his fingers, “do this.” She followed his eyes to Marina and watched her light pink shirt turn into a putrid green. Marina looked down in dismay and groaned.

“Not fucking funny, Connor! I don’t have a rich mommy and daddy to pay for all my clothes like your bitch ass!”

Connor just shrugged.

Pete turned to Julia, grinning. “So? Impressed, now?” 

“Yes,” Julia said, and she stopped bracing her limbs for a sudden escape. “Show me how, Connor.”

He did, and Julia copied his movements. She tried again and again, pouring all her consciousness into that one index finger. The room around her darkened and fell away. There was only her finger and the flame. She sat there for what felt like an eternity, making the same movements.

She felt like she was being woken up when a hand gently grasped her shoulder.

“Julia,” Pete said, but his mouth moved slowly, and his words were distorted, like he was underwater. The room was blurry when she looked up and it took a moment for everything to come back into view. Everyone was gone and the pale morning light streaming through the windows was now a dark orange.

“I didn’t do it,” Julia said numbly, her voice sounding alien to her ears.

“You have to understand something, Julia,” he told her as he helped her to her feet, then moved her to the couch and sat next to her. “Are you listening?” he asked, looking into her eyes.

She nodded. Her vision was steadying, but all she wanted to do was crawl back over to the table and try again. She was already tired of Pete’s nice-guy shtick. 

“You’re not going to like it,” he said, and she had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes.

“Just tell me,” she said.

“This is not whatever you want it to be, okay?” he told her. “This isn’t the time when all your dreams come true and you find happiness and power and anything else you can think of. There’s magic, yes, but this is still the real world.”

Julia felt a thudding in her chest, and her hands were slippery as she asked, “What do you mean?”

He took a breath. “I mean, our magic—your magic—is weak. It’s not what you’ll have expected. Ethel thinks that’s just the way it is for humans, that we’re inherently inferior beings and this is the closest we can get to the good stuff. I think—well, I think it might have more to do with our character.”

“Moral character, you mean?” she asked. She knew she would practice until her back broke, but she wasn’t as sure where she would rate on the scale of good and bad.

He nodded. “But you’re young, beautiful, smart. I think you have a chance to be better than us.” He reached out to her and his touch was clammy, nauseating. She pulled away and felt anger rise in her.

“Just because I’m young and pretty doesn’t mean I’m a good person,” Julia told him and stood up. And that would be how it worked, wouldn’t it? If there was anything bad, anything less than savory in her heart, the goodness—the magic—would refuse to come. She told herself it had only been an afternoon, but already her spirit was slowly deflating.

“Connor’s a prodigy, and it took him three months to nail that candle spell, Julia,” he said. “Will you come back tomorrow? I’ll show you my research.” 

Of course she’d come back. She wanted to scream at him for how little he knew. There was nothing else anymore. The old Julia had died a year ago, and yesterday, her body had finally been buried. There was no getting it back. She could join her in the ground or she could try to learn magic.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Julia said and left out the front door. Stepping out from Virginia house onto Virginia street. There was not a single person inside she trusted, with herself or with magic. And before her familiar blanket of hopelessness appeared at her feet, ready and awaiting her defeated embrace, she remembered what she had decided earlier, and knew where she needed to go next.

 

The flower shop was dark as Julia stood outside. People passed by her as she stood across the street watching the empty storefront. She didn’t like how close that house was to the town. She could still smell the perfumed cushions and chamomile tea. Her café was no longer safe, and her own house felt too close to all of this to be entirely safe. What were the odds, really? Here was magic, handed to her, and oh everyone who knows about it are right in Julia’s hometown—no need for any quest.

And here was a flower shop, so mind-bendingly mundane that Julia could almost laugh. But she wouldn’t because there was a connection here, and she didn’t miss things like that.

It was early evening now. She had gone to the flower shop, but she had not expected Kady to be there, and she knew where she had to look next. It had been with her since this morning. A thought neatly tucked into her head, camouflaged among the others, but Julia had tracked it down and pulled it out. Looked for the source and found nothing. But it was not hers, she knew. That should have alarmed her, but its quiet, pulsing presence kept her oddly calm.

The graveyard, it said. The graveyard, it repeated, again and again.

So, she went to the graveyard. It was past her old high school, down a narrow country road that had used to be the highway, decades ago. She walked on the grass alongside it and passed by a mile of green field, separated from her by a tall fence. Every once in a while, she saw a horse bent over grazing or trotting leisurely in the sun as it died. But as the field ended and she came up to her left-turn, a horse rested its head atop the wooden bar and stared at her. It was a light blonde color with a nicely maintained mane, and it watched her with solemn, dark eyes. Julia approached and put an open palm on its muzzle. It didn’t seem to care. It snorted and then turned away, trotting off into the distance.  
The graveyard, or cemetery as the town called it, was split into two fields, divided by the main road that ran through and brought travelers into town. A pale marble gate mirrored itself across the street, connected with a tall black fence that surrounded the field. When there was an important funeral, cars would line alongside the road and one lone procession of black umbrellas and suits would walk among the graves. The rest of the time, however, there was only the tombstones and the indifferent horses that watched over them, far enough across the road you might forget they were there.

Julia had never been here before. She might have been “emo” for a few years, but this above her qualifications. Her and Quentin had mostly hung out behind an abandoned church that never got renovated but never got demolished either and drank shitty beer until the early morning.

The gate had a silver latch in the center, and when she flipped it, the white bars swung inwards. There was a keyhole drilled into the metal, but clearly, someone was negligent. An oak tree stood silently in the corner, casting a shadow over the grass. The graves were not sorted neatly, or at all. Tombstones of all shapes and sizes rose up like someone had thrown a handful of pins on the ground to decide their placement. A single bench was backed against the fence with a little plaque on the ground next to it and some golden lettering on its surface. Julia had heard about that bench. It had been there for years, but when a local student died, the town thought it’d be a nice sentiment to slap their memory on something. A moldering, forgotten bench was a fitting commemoration of death, she supposed.

It was easy to spot Kady. She was the only breathing thing in the whole place.

She was near the near end of the graveyard, and her back was pressed against a tombstone. Her legs were tucked up to her chest and her arms held her knees closely against her, but her head was up high, leaning forward so it did not touch the stone. She might’ve been sad. She probably was. People who visited graveyards, especially this lonely one, were usually sad. But she didn’t look it. She looked blank. A blank white cover of something darker, but not peaceful, quiet sadness. Turmoil. It looked like she was screaming at herself, from inside herself.

“Hey,” Julia said from far enough away that Kady could run if she wanted. She looked up from staring ahead and found Julia’s face, then her eyes. The blank look still covered her face, and Julia was glad. She wasn’t sure she wanted to face what was underneath it.

“Why are you here? Are you following me or some shit?” Kady said, but her tone was tired. “No. I just felt like coming here.” Julia told her. “I know when someone disappears like that, they probably don’t want someone to come looking after them.” She thought about asking about Pete, if she knew who he was, why he was there, if he was why she left, but she didn’t think she’d get any honest answers and then that bridge would be burned. She could play a long game.

“Yeah, well, you’d be right.” Kady said, but she continued looking at her, so Julia still had a good chance.

She nodded to her foot. “That alright?” It looked like it was wrapped in an ace bandage.

“Fine.”

“My offer still stands. If you ever want to skip rocks.” she said. Before Kady could respond, she pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her back pocket. She had thought she might go through a whole pack today, but as soon as she had stepped foot in the house, she had forgotten all about it.

“You want one?” she said, lifting the lid.

Kady looked at her and she thought she saw her mouth inch upwards. 

“I’m not gonna turn down a cig.”

Julia walked over to her and bent down so Kady could take it, and then she pulled one out for herself. 

“Shit,” she said, staring at it between her two fingers. “I forgot my lighter.”

Kady took something neon green out of her pocket. “You’re lucky,” she said, raising her eyebrows as she handed it over to Julia. “I had a lighter but nothing to smoke.”

“I don’t tend to be lucky,” Julia said as she took a seat across from Kady. She sat on the grass and was careful to leave a wide gap between herself and the tombstone behind her. She guessed Kady would not be sitting above just anyone’s grave.

“People think I’m lucky for the same reasons I think I’m unlucky,” Kady said. Her black curls flew across her face and she raised her hand to push them back. A tattoo on her wrist flashed at Julia. It was a symbol of some kind. Many thin lines were woven together, but they were still separate and still defined. It looked Celtic. But whatever its origins, looking at it, Julia felt a rush and knew she hadn’t been wrong. That was some magical-looking shit, which meant Kady was definitely involved in the same thing Julia was.

“Sounds like people,” she said and inhaled deeply.

They sat and smoked in silence for a little. Summer was approaching, so the days hung on longer, but the darkness was now unavoidable, creeping up the grass toward them.

“So, your shop,” Julia said, not mentioning the cryptic response Kady had given her when she mentioned it before. “Are you hiring?”

Kady scoffed as she pulled the cigarette out of her mouth and looked to Julia. “Do you know anything about plants?”

“No,” Julia told her. “But I’m a quick learner. I need a job soon or my parents are going to kick me out.”

“Apply to a Taco Bell. That’s easy shit, and you don’t have to have years of prior knowledge.” There was an edge to her voice, but if anything, it sounded like amusement.

“You wouldn’t be there.” Julia said as she looked at her. “Come on, you can’t be all alone up there. You need someone to help you run it. Dump me with the real basic, annoying stuff.”

Kady’s eyes took her in quickly, but the intensity still sent chills down her back. She couldn’t tell what her eyes concluded. “Give me your number,” she said.

Julia had to fight a smile as she gave an equally stony-faced Kady her phone number. Then the silence resumed, and when Julia finished her cigarette, she snuffed it out and got to her feet. Kady didn’t watch her as she did, and she didn’t watch as she walked away. Once Julia’s back was turned, she couldn’t know if her eyes were on her, but she thought she would have felt her gaze, and she felt nothing except smoke in her lungs.

 

**(202) 555-0173  
come in tmrw -k**

Julia read the message without unlocking her phone and then tossed it to the carpeted floor. She ignored the flutter in her stomach. The only feeling she allowed herself toward Kady was cold, hard resolution to find out exactly what she knew. She had not met a single person she trusted today, but she felt as safe as she ever had. Right now, with _The Chatwins_ open on her lap.

She turned the page, and her resolution grew.

The bell hung in the doorway jingled as Julia stepped inside. Kady hadn’t sent any more texts, so Julia assumed she could show up whenever. It was early afternoon now, but she had come as soon as she had woken up.

She had never been inside before. It was nice, she had to admit. Quiet and peaceful, sleepy afternoon sun beaming through the windows. Potted flowers rested on the floor against the walls and on the peeling antique table that stood in the middle of the room. At the back, there was a counter, and behind it, a door. A storage room, probably. Julia guessed that was where Kady was. The door remained closed, so she likely hadn’t heard the bell. 

Julia made her way to the back of the store and knocked on the door. When a moment passed and there was no response, she tried the handle. Surprisingly, it didn’t resist, and the door swung open—right into Kady. “Fuck, really?” she said to Julia as she pushed past her and locked the door. “I was coming. And I could swear I locked that,” she added in a softer voice, more to herself than Julia.

“Sorry,” Julia said unsurely. “Anyway, is this a good time? Your text was kinda cryptic.”

Kady looked at her and shrugged. “Now’s good. You have any cigs?”

“Uh, yeah.” Julia took the pack out of her pocket and handed it to Kady.

“You seem like a real Type-A, so I’m guessing you did your homework. You stay here and help any customers, and I’m gonna go smoke, alright?” There was no sign she was joking, so Julia just nodded and stood there hesitantly.

Kady pushed the door open and the sound of the bell ran in the shop, and then she was gone. Julia could just see the tip of her left boot through the window.

“Right,” she muttered to herself, arranging herself properly behind the counter. This girl seemed fucking weird.

At least ten minutes passed, and then the door opened. Julia looked up, her heart racing slightly, but it was only Kady.

“First lesson,” she said. “No one ever fucking comes in here.”

A smile was shocked out of Julia, and even though Kady’s mouth remained straight, her eyes were light.

“So, what, you really don’t need anyone? Why am I here then?” Julia asked, stepping out from the counter.

“Well, no one ever fucking comes in here, remember?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Gets boring.”

“Plants don’t keep you company?”

“Not in the same way,” Kady said as she leaned against the table. She always looked effortless. Comfortable in a way Julia only dreamt about.

“Well, as long as I’m here, I can help. What do you do around here?”

Kady ran her hand through her hair and the black curls flopped around messily. “I usually close up early now and go to the garden…you know, the community garden? There’s this woman I have an arrangement with.”

Julia tilted her head and eyed her strangely. Kady rolled her eyes and added, “Her garden. I take care of it. Don’t know why she fucking bothers paying for it when she never visits. Rich people.”

She didn’t say anything in response. Kady said in the silence, “You’re probably rich, right, Type-A?”

Julia was admiring a purple flower. It had big, droopy petals and she held them in her hand softly as she stared.

“My name’s Julia. And yeah.” She didn’t bother with that upper-middle-class bullshit. “So, does she buy lots of—these things in return?”

Kady knew exactly what she was talking about, and that knocked the hairs on Julia’s arms right up. She mentally pulled herself back from their banter. She was sure Kady was a fascinating person, but she really didn’t give a shit and she needed to act like it. There were things so much bigger than a pretty—and kind of annoying—girl. “No, she doesn’t like pretty things. She has more of an herb-type thing going on.”

“I see,” Julia said lightly. “You wanna go to her garden, then?”

 

They stopped at Starbucks on their walk across town. It was driving the little café out of business, and so Julia had always pointedly ignored it, but now that she knew Marina had been drugging her, she hoped that café burned to the ground. 

Julia only drank hot coffee, so even though it was the afternoon, she got a latte. She sipped it as they crossed the street, and as the bitter taste of coffee slipped down her throat, she scrunched her nose reflexively.

“What’s that? You said that was your favorite,” Kady said. She had been watching her, then. Julia felt a blush rise to her cheeks.

She thought about lying, but that was really a lot of effort for not giving a shit. “No, it is. It’s just been a long time since I drank it without vodka. Tastes weird without it.”

Kady started laughing. “You _would_ be an alcoholic, Type-A.” She nudged her playfully with her elbow, and Julia gave her a tiny smile.

They walked the rest of the way in silence, and when they arrived at the community garden, Kady turned to Julia. “You ready for this?”

Before she could answer, Kady was putting her foot between the metal rungs and pulling herself up. She jumped down once she was at the top and landed firmly on the woodchips.

“Is this some kind of heist?” Julia said dryly, watching her through the spaces in the gate.

Kady scoffed. “Heist of what? There’s nothing to steal back here except for some overpriced garden gnomes—god, like that creepy motherfucker,” she said, pointing toward something to her left. Julia craned her neck but couldn’t see it. “You coming, Type-A?” 

“I have a goddamn name,” Julia said. The words felt weak in her ears, even as she scaled the gate in silence and jumped down next to Kady.

Now that she was standing next to her, she could see Kady’s face better. Her eyes were hooded and dark, which sent a thrill of both shock and something else down Julia’s back. Kady moved closer to her as she stood deathly still.

“What about _princess_?” she murmured in a low voice and Julia swore she felt the warmth of her breath on her face, even though they were still several feet apart.

She wanted to tell her to fuck off, but instead she said, “That’s nicer, at least.”

The corner of Kady’s mouth rose up. “Uh, not really. But if you’d rather be part of the soul-sucking monarchy than a little neurotic, have at it.”

“How about I call you _bitch_?” Julia said, chuckling despite herself.

“Well, that’s just dirty talk, now, princess,” Kady said and let her eyes linger on Julia’s for a moment before she turned away, her feet crunching on the woodchips.

Julia followed her to the plot and watched as she filled up a gardening can and tipped it over each of the plants. It only took a minute, and then she crouched down and pressed her face close to the dirt. It looked like she examined each plant individually, not watching one any longer than the rest. Neither of them spoke. The silence that had settled was profound, and Julia was watching her so closely she barely felt the goosebumps rising on her arms. She wanted to ask her what she was doing, but the air wrapped tightly around her and held her words inside.

“You good?”

Julia heard Kady’s voice, but she couldn’t pull her eyes away from the dirt. She stared at it until her vision was hazy, and the air was still wrapped around her chest, making her breaths slower and slower. There was something there, something beneath the surface. If she just kept watching it…

“Hey, you alright?” Kady was next to her now, her hand on her shoulder and her face inches from her own. “Julia?”

She felt the hotness in her cheeks again and her eyes slipped back to reality, with firm lines and solid colors. The dirt was just brown and wet. She looked at Kady and there was a new pull. She wondered if she felt it, too. 

Kady let her hand fall from Julia’s shoulder, but then she stepped closer to her. She wanted to ask about her tattoo, and exactly what she knew about magic, and she wanted to tell her she kind of liked her, even after all this time of thinking her feelings were broken.

As Julia watched her, something red and shiny behind Kady caught Julia’s eye. Without thinking, she glanced toward it.

“Oh, fuck me,” she said.

Kady’s lips parted slightly. “Woah—” she started.

Julia shook her head. “No, no, it’s the fucking gnome. Jesus, that is creepy.”

It was in the middle of a garden plot, at least three feet tall, with an unrealistically wide grin and closed eyes, which gave it a jarring expression. It looked like it was having some kind of fucked-up internal struggle.

“Right,” Kady said, glancing behind her. “Told you it was terrifying.” She looked back to Julia and grinned. “What were you saying? Something about fucking…”

Julia took a step back. “Something about going home.”

They walked back to Julia’s house in silence. Julia couldn’t tell if it was comfortable or not. When they stood at the bottom of the stairs, she finally looked at Kady.

“Do you need a ride?”

“Nah,” Kady said. She came in close to Julia—almost pressing against her—as she slipped something in her coat, and then she was gone, without a goodbye.

Julia watched her disappear in the shadows of the buildings. The pack of cigarettes hung heavy in her pocket.

 

**(202) 555-0173  
u got a job if u want it**


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is dark! very dark! i didn't mean for it to be this dark but here we are! tw for sexual assault...brief, but still. read with caution

“Diaz? She Mexican?” the woman said. “We already got too many Mexicans.”

“No, ma’am,” Eliza said, her eyes flicking toward Kady. “She was born in Oregon.”

“Yeah, alright, then.” She was holding a boy against her hip as she looked Kady up and down, taking in her ripped jeans and baggy hoodie with a curled lip. The boy had light brown skin and hair that flopped down across his eyes. He stared at Kady’s shoes. “Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s everything. We’ll just go get her bag and then you can all get acquainted, sound good?” Her cheery smile was the saddest fucking thing Kady had ever seen.

The woman grunted in affirmation.

Eliza’s dingy Scion was parked across the street, out of earshot of the front porch.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kady said. “She’s said like ten words and she’s already a cunt!”

Eliza sighed and turned toward her. “Kady, this is your last foster home. Do you understand the severity of that? If you _fuck_ ”—she leaned in close as she whispered it—“this up, you’re going to a group home. I know you think you’ve had it tough, but you do not want to end up there.”

“I’ve only got one year left. I’m not afraid of a group home.” Kady leaned against the car, bringing her muddy boot to rest on the metal. She hoped it left a mess.

“Well, you should be. You are going to walk in there fine, and walk out on ten different kinds of drugs and no future. You stay here, you keep your head down and smile, and when you graduate, you go to the junior college. This all becomes a crazy story, okay? Try to look on the bright side.” Eliza’s hair was coming out of its bun, and frizzy strands hung down her cheeks. Her eyes were wild, begging Kady to just once, listen. She was trying her best, Kady knew. And her best wasn’t fucking good enough.

“This isn’t a story! It’s my goddamn shitty life, that I have to live every-fucking-day, and there is no bright side!” She snatched her backpack from Eliza’s outstretched hands and started toward the house, her heavy boots sending stray pebbles flying.

“See you next week!” Eliza called after her.

The door was already shut and locked. Kady knocked twice, lightly, and waited for a response. None came.

She dropped her backpack and groaned, digging her nails into her palms. “Come on,” she muttered. She moved to knock on the door again, but it opened before her knuckles could reach it. The boy stood in the doorway. He didn’t meet her eyes, and then he quickly disappeared back inside.

She took her backpack and slung it around her shoulder, quickly casting a look back toward the street, but it was empty. She followed him inside.

Upstairs, there were two bedrooms and one bathroom. The boy led Kady to the bathroom.

The tub was small and narrow, padded with several worn towels. He pointed at it without looking at her, and then dropped to his knees and crawled into the space under the sink. The cabinet doors closed sharply behind him.

She looked toward the tub. “Come on, kid,” she said, and tried to open the door. It fought back firmly, and she realized he was holding it shut.

“Fine, whatever. Sleep next to mildew, I don’t give a shit,” she said. She dropped her backpack in the tub and then climbed in beside it, pressing her boots out as far as they would go.

Officially, her last first day of high school was tomorrow. Probably wouldn’t be. She’d gone to eight high schools in three years, and she didn’t see why she would slow down now. Maybe she wouldn’t even go tomorrow.

She heard Eliza’s annoying, shrill voice ringing in her ears, admonishing her. Group home, Kady. That’s what’s next.

As she listened to the T.V. and shouts in the distance and tried to ignore the scratching that sounded like it was coming from under the sink, she kept her eyes open and stared out the window. It was high up on the wall, so she could only see the sky and all its bright stars. It was an odd feeling, knowing what was coming for her. Somehow, she didn’t believe it.

 

Soft light shone down on the floor, and for a moment, Kady thought she was back in Eliza’s apartment, soaking in her tub, her damp clothes dragging her down. Knocking and yelling at the door—all in the distance. 

She felt a slight tug in her chest. Breaking into a social worker’s home had landed her in a shitload of trouble. She had Eliza to thank for getting her out of it.

Kady stood up from the tub, stretching her limbs and groaning inwardly at the aches in her neck and her calves. “Fuck that bitch,” she muttered to herself. She didn’t owe her anything. 

She crouched down on the floor and rapped on the cupboard. “Hey, there anything I need to know about? A carpool or something?” This woman seemed like the type that wanted her chatty and smiling when the social workers showed up and gone the rest of the time, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.

There was no response, and Kady wondered if he was even still in there. She replaced her dirty shirt with one from the floor and then unzipped her backpack and took out her puffer jacket. It was the nicest piece of clothing she owned, but she couldn’t remember where it had come from. She thought she had probably stolen it.

She saw some kids sitting on the floor as she passed through the living room. There were five of them, and they were much younger than her, at least nine or ten. They didn’t look at her as she walked past.

Eliza told her it should take thirty minutes to get to school, so Kady shoved her hands in her pockets and pretended there was music in her ears as she walked.

 

The first two classes dragged by slowly. People were either laughing or giving each other dirty looks, but no one so much as glanced at Kady. During her break she walked around the campus twice but got lost the second time near the science building. The bell rung as she pulled out her map and by the time she emerged in the quad, it was mostly empty. A few people lingered on picnic benches, and she glimpsed the backs of the stragglers running to class.

The main building had thin, metal stairs against the outside wall, like an apartment building. As she neared the top, she saw a boy sitting with his back to her and his legs dangling out through the gaps in the railing. He was moving his head slightly—it was barely perceptible, but Kady thought she could maybe hear music.

She looked toward the propped-open door and glanced inside the empty hallway. Her English class was somewhere down there. She shifted her weight hesitantly, leaning back against the railing.

“What’re you doing?” someone said.

She tore her eyes away from the hallway and saw the boy, now standing, glaring at her. He moved quickly.

“I don’t know,” she said, the words shocked out of her. She flipped her hair to the other side. “What’re you doing?”

His glare faded slightly, but his eyes were still narrowed as he examined her. “Thinking. And listening.” He lifted his left hand and Kady saw he was holding a phone.

“Can I listen?” Kady said. A particularly strong gust of wind slammed the door shut.

“Yeah, I guess.” he said, looking at her strangely.

“Look, man, you’re the one out here alone, listening to music, looking all angsty and shit,” she said. “I’m just trying to be friendly.”

“Yeah, I doubt that,” he said as his eyebrow quirked up.

“Alright, fine, I just wanna listen to some music. Good music. I haven’t had access to anything other than a car radio in months,” she said.

His face remained blank as he watched her and then he abruptly came over to where she was standing. He held out his phone. “Go on,” he said.

Once she took it, he gave her an earbud, and she put it in her ear. He had some sort of app running she didn’t recognize. “You even got any good fucking music on here?” she muttered.

“Well, it’s Spotify,” he said, “So, y’know, just search whatever.”

“The fuck is Spotify?” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Jesus, where’ve you been? Okay, give it back, c’mon.”

She glared at him as she handed the phone back over. 

“What do you want me to search?” he asked, staring at the screen seriously.

“Dude, I could’ve figured it out, I’m not an idiot,” she said.

He ignored her, his finger hovering over the phone. 

“Okay, ‘The Frights’,” she said, a slight blush rising on her cheeks. “Type that.”

“Frights?” He looked at her for confirmation.

She nodded.

“Hmm. Okay, here we go,” he said as music started up in Kady’s ear.

They stood as far apart as the headphones would allow for the first song, and then Kady moved to sit down, and he had to follow. Another song played, and another, and Kady forgot he was even there. She closed her eyes and imagined she was back in her bedroom. Her quiet bedroom with the stars. 

Then she felt the earbud slip out and she opened her eyes. The boy was watching her. She reached down and put it back in her ear before she met his eyes.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Okay.”

He pulled his earbud out and tossed it to her, then stood up. “You can keep that.”

“The earbuds? Or the phone?” she asked.

“Both,” he said. “Neither are mine.”

He pushed the door open and disappeared down the hallway. Kady watched him until the door shut, and then she shrugged and turned up the volume.

 

When the battery started to run low, she left. She wandered downtown, a few blocks from the high school. 

The town looked charming on the surface, but Kady didn’t trust it. It was a small town by itself, but the several larger towns that surrounded it blended with its edges and merged all kinds of people. Kady had just been in one of the next towns over; she thought her fosters had brought her to a restaurant here once. 

She remembered because of the myosotis. They bloomed everywhere in Bluehill. Invasive little fuckers. She wouldn’t let a single one grow in her garden, but out here, as someone else’s problem, she had to admit they were beautiful. She wondered if the town had come first, and the flowers had followed, sensing a claim they could stake, a place they could devour. 

She wandered into a clothing shop, or boutique, as the fancy white lettering said. The store was brightly lit, creating a glow against the stark white walls. Any brighter and Kady would have a headache. The racks were filled with flowy blouses and sundresses with price tags that made Kady laugh. A woman stood at the back of the store, looking intently at her phone.

Kady drifted toward several wooden barrels with jewelry racks resting on top. With a quick glance back at the woman, Kady slipped a necklace off its hook and pushed it deep into her pocket. She walked to the other side of the barrel, and then glanced up. The woman was still looking down. Kady took an earring and brought it to the same pocket, then reached back for its twin.

“Can I help you?” a shrill voice said.

Kady looked up and saw the woman walking toward her. She quickly closed her palm around the metal and let her hand casually fall to her side, slipping the second earring into her pocket. “Nope, just leaving.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, her long nails clicking against her phone as she eyed Kady. “I’ll be watching for you, young lady.”

Kady held up her middle finger as she walked out.

She walked around some more, shivering and hungry. She would find a pawn shop tomorrow and then she’d go straight to a Subway. It had been at least three days since she had last eaten.

There was a small park at the town center, more concrete than grass, and a few picnic benches took up what little space on the lawn there was. She was walking down the center pathway when her eyes unconsciously slipped toward the side.

The boy from earlier was sprawled on the top of one of the picnic benches. His legs were bent and crossed, and his eyes were closed. It looked like he was asleep. She felt a twinge of guilt for taking his music.

She crossed over to the grass and stood next to the bench. Her shadow draped over him, but he didn’t stir. Her fingers gripped something, and she sighed as she realized what she was doing. The necklace shone in the sun as she drew it out of her pocket. It was thin and long, and in the middle hung a small charm she hadn’t noticed. Tiny lines weaved together within a circle, and when she squinted, she saw it was divided into four different sections. She didn’t like it.

Kady set the necklace on his shirt, over his chest, although it was closer to his stomach, really, because his flannel was unbuttoned down to the top of his ribs. She lingered for a moment to watch his face, and as she did, she watched his eyes flicker open. She half-expected it, so she kept staring at him calmly.

“The fuck are you doing here? Watching me sleep or some shit?” He grunted as he pulled himself up and swung his feet over to rest on top of the bench.

She snorted. “Like you were sleeping. I saw you moving.”

“It’s called dreaming,” he said brusquely, rubbing his temples with his fingers. “I have some weird-ass dreams.”

“Me too,” she said, crossing her arms.

He noticed the necklace for the first time, clinging in the folds of his flannel. “What’s this?” he asked with furrowed eyebrows.

“Payment. I don’t owe you anything.”

“Oh, this is about the phone?” he said, untangling the necklace and peering at it. “Look, I just got it today. There might be some weird shit on it, I don’t know. That kid was a fucking freak.”

“Right,” she said, at a loss for a moment. “Well, did you at least steal a charger from him, too? It’s dead already.”

“Nah,” he said. The seriousness in his eyes faded as he watched her. “It wasn’t in his locker.” He hopped down and stood next to Kady, at least half a foot taller than her. As he looked down at her, he unclasped the necklace and then fastened it again, around his neck.

“I meant for you to sell it,” she told him.

He grinned at her for the first time. The warmth from his eyes spread to her chest, and she held her arms tighter, trying to smother it. “I like it too much,” he said. “A weird chick gave it to me.” 

“Fuck off.”

He turned, his loose shirt rippling in the air, and started walking away from Kady. She rolled her eyes and let her arms drop. “Wait,” she said, starting after him.

He looked to her, a smirk on his face. “I’m fucking off.”

“Come on, dude, don’t be an asshole,” she said.

“Oh, you wanna come with me?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Uh, less now, for sure.” She spoke in the same mocking tone as he did.

“Alright, c’mon.” He moved to the side, so she could come up beside to him. “Let’s go get a fuckin’ phone charger.”

They went to the nearby Walmart. Nearby, Kady learned, meant the next town over.

As the doors locked back into place and the bus pulled away from the curb, Kady looked to the boy. His heel was resting on the edge of his seat and his knee pressed up against the window as he glanced outside, but when he felt Kady’s gaze, he turned to her.

“What?” he said. The edge was back in his voice; Kady got the sense that was just the way he talked.

“You got some idea where we’re going?” Her back didn’t touch the seat as she bounced her leg. “I’m living in a new place. And I don’t really know how it works yet. But I should probably end up there tonight.”

“Yeah?” he said. His dark eyes searched her face, and she pointedly met his stare. “I’m living in a new place, too. New as in three blocks from my old one. So calm down, alright? I’ve lived in this town my whole life, I know it like the back of my hand.”

“You said it was in Roseville,” she said, a playful grin tugging at her lips.

“Man, whatever. It’s the same fuckin’ thing. People living in Bluehill have to know the bigger towns, too, if they want all their chains and shit.” He nudged her leg with his knee. “Here, this is the stop.”

She stepped out first, and the blinding midday sun seared into her vision. She heard the air release as the doors shut, but she didn’t turn around to see if the boy was still behind her. Her eyes were closed, but the light wasn’t fading, if anything, it was growing brighter. She heard him say something and cracked her eyes, but the world was skewed and flickering, like someone had turned down the graphics.

“Hey, you good?” he said louder, and it pierced through the fog surrounding her.

“Yeah, great,” she said as she tried to turn around. She fell forward slightly, almost connecting with his chest. He grabbed her shoulders and held her back, leaning down to examine her.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m just really fucking hungry,” she said. She focused on his face and the firm ground beneath her to steady herself.

“You want a ride?”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“I could give you a piggyback,” he suggested, grinning.

“Shut up,” she said, pushing his hands away. “I’m fine.”

He held his hands up. “Alright. It’s a quick walk, anyway.”

“Could be a long one,” she muttered as they started down the sidewalk. “Doesn’t matter, ‘cause I’m fine.”

She saw him shake his head to the side. “Damn, woman. Okay. I got it.” There was a note of admiration in the exasperation. She ignored it.

The Walmart looked the same as they all did. He took off immediately, heading to the back of the store. She shrugged and walked after him, sidestepping several people that moved for him and ended up directly in her path.

“Do you know where to look?” she asked as he peeked down another aisle.

“’Course,” he said. He started down an aisle suddenly, surprising Kady. She took a few steps back and followed him.

“Hey, she needs a phone charger,” he said, not especially gently, to a thirty-year-old in a blue vest.

“Uh,” the man said, without looking up from the shelves. “Phone chargers are in aisle 24.”

The boy turned to Kady, lifting his eyebrows. They followed the big numbers above the aisles until they found themselves looking at a collection of identical, black cords. “This one’s iPhone, this one’s Android, this one’s Samsung, and this one’s iPhone again.” He looked to Kady, holding the phone in her hand. “You know what that is?”

“Shit, man,” she said, turning it over in her hand, “You’re the one who stole it.”

He crouched down, grabbing a package in his hand. “You think it’s a droid?”

“Uh, maybe. It doesn’t have a home button. Oh, wait. It says droid on the back,” she said.

He mock-sighed and shook his head. “Nice job.”

“Well, look,” she said, gesturing to the rack, “There’s like five different chargers for a droid.”

“Yeah, they all take the same one. They’re not little bitches like Apple,” he said and stood up, grabbing one of them randomly. He tucked it into his pocket without even a glance sideways.

“Hey,” she warned, leaning back to glimpse down the aisle. “I got arrested in a Walmart once.”

“Wow,” he said, grinning at her as he grabbed a different charger and pushed it into his other pocket. “Sounds like you weren’t very good.”

“I’m fucking great,” she told him. “People just hate me.”

“Hmm. Were you this much a pussy when you stole the necklace?” he asked. Her eyes flickered down to his chest instinctively. It looked nice there, a few inches below his collar bone. 

“For your information…” she said as she pulled the earrings out of her pocket. They were long and shapeless, just metal chains, but she liked how they swayed in her ears as she pushed them in. “I grabbed these, too.”

“Those look nice,” he said, his demeanor sobering up slightly. She fidgeted under his gaze, looking for something to fixate on. Her eyes darted back to him, and she smirked as she looked at his waist.

“Okay, that’s gonna be a problem,” she said. “You look like you’re wearing those floaty things, you know, that kids wear when they can’t swim.”

“Seriously?” He glanced down at his bulging pockets. “I’ll just cover it up.” He started unbuttoning his already ridiculously unbuttoned flannel.

“Dude! You can’t just take your shirt off.”

“I don’t remember seeing that rule anywhere.” He kept unbuttoning.

She heaved a heavy sigh and reached over, pulling his hands down. “Not-suspicious people wear shirts. Just take my jacket.” She unzipped her jacket and handed it over.

He tied it around his waist as he stared at her t-shirt. “What the fuck’s going on there?”

She glanced down, forgetting what she had thrown on this morning. The hem was just above her belly-button, and the front had a cartoonish drawing of a little girl with pigtails and a tiara. In cursive, it said “We can’t all be princesses. Someone has to sit on the curb and clap as I go by.”

Now she remembered. She had grabbed one of the kid’s shirts off the bathroom floor this morning. “What a weird fucking kid,” she said as she looked back up to the boy. He was staring at her, eyebrows slightly narrowed.

She shrugged. Not knowing why, she said, “Last night, I slept in a bathroom with a kid that doesn’t say anything. This is his shirt. Probably.” Her stomach dropped as she realized it had only been one night, and it was possible more kids usually slept in there. This could be some other eleven-year-old’s shirt.

“Foster home?”

“Yeah.”

They didn’t say anything else, and he swept past her, disappearing around the corner. “Come on!” he called back to her.

She followed him, scuffing her shoes on the floor as she did. “Man, wait up,” she muttered. The dizziness still hung around her, and she was regretting giving up her jacket as she shivered and watched goosebumps appear on her arms.

He was waiting for her up ahead, hovering in front of an aisle. When she was almost there, he tucked inside and gestured to the white racks. “Take your pick,” he said.

Her mouth instantly watered. “Swedish fish,” she said, glancing to him. He nodded, without looking at her. “How do you feel about red vines?”

“Better than twizzlers.”

“Right answer,” she said, grabbing a pack. She unzipped her backpack and shoved the two bags inside. “I bet we could fit something else in here.”

“Yeah?” he said with a mischievous glint in his eyes. “What’re you thinking?”

They left a few minutes later, Kady’s backpack stuffed with a liter of Coke and two bags of Doritos. She held her breath as they walked out, the middle-aged man standing by the door barely glancing at them.

“Fuck,” she said, nudging him as soon as they were outside. “God, how did no one see us?”

“Magic,” he said.

Her heart jolted uncomfortably. “No, that was all me,” she said. He looked at her. “Maybe a little you.”

They walked back to the bus stop in a friendly silence. When they reached the bench, she spread her legs out and allowed her knee to brush against his. She pulled the soda out first, setting it on the ground, and then pulled out the Doritos, tearing the bag open and inhaling. “Goddamn,” she said, as she munched on the chips. The boy watched her amusedly. She held out the bag and he shook his head, reaching for the soda instead.

He looked ridiculous drinking from the liter and she laughed around her mouthful. He screwed the cap back on and then held out his middle finger. “Okay, gimme the bag,” he said, and plunged his hand in. Her fingers brushed against his wrist as she pulled her hand out.

When he was done, he fumbled with getting the chargers out of the containers. Kady watched him, holding back laughter, until he looked up at her, glaring. “Here, use these,” she said, reaching into her bag and holding out a pair of scissors.

“The fuck?” he said staring at her in disbelief.

It was still tricky to cut through the plastic, but he managed. “Aha,” he exclaimed as he successfully fit the charger into the port. He tried the other one, and when it fit, he turned to her. “See?”

“Yeah, whatever,” she said, taking a gulp from the bottle.

The bus came soon after that and they made their way to the back again. She watched dusk settle over the city as they slipped back into small Bluehill. She couldn’t tell when they crossed the border, but she was sad they did.

She recognized their stop from earlier, but she didn’t say anything until the boy darted up. They disembarked, and then he looked at her awkwardly as she heard the bus pull away and slowly fade into the distance.

“Can you get home from here?” he asked.

She was only a little doubtful. “Sure.” She dug through her backpack for the other bag of chips and thrust them at him.

He took them under his arm. “I’ll see you around.”

“Maybe,” she said and walked away, through town, past the high school, and into the derelict neighborhood where she lived. For now, anyway. 

The door was unlocked when she tried it, so she went in, making a beeline for her new sleeping quarters.

“Who’s that?” A woman’s voice called out. Kady sighed quietly and descended the few stairs she had managed to climb.

“Kady,” she said as the woman came into view. “You met me yesterday.”

“Yes, yes, I remember. You can call me Ms. Richards.”

“Got it,” Kady said, trying to force her lips into a smile.

“You weren’t at breakfast this morning.”

Fuck. She cursed the kid silently. “Sor—”

The woman interrupted her. “You really should’ve been at breakfast. It’s quite important ‘round here. As is, you’ll still be owing us. Let’s see, you’re twice the age of the others, so let’s say double—forty.” She eyed Kady disapprovingly. “Fifty.”

“Excuse me?” Kady said, and her shock kept her tone within the confines of civility.

“You heard me, girl. Fifty dollars is the price you pay for the roof over your head. Every week until you leave, like rent.”

“You only pay rent once a month,” she snapped.

The woman shook her head as she smiled wryly. “Fifty’s such a predictable number, don’t you think? Sixty seems like it’d suit you better, girl.”

Kady’s nails tug into the wooden railing.

“I hope you have a Friday payday, ‘cause that’s when I’ll be coming to collect. Don’t bother coming down for breakfast tomorrow. Food’s for kids that pay their bills,” she said, her smile more pronounced as she turned and made her way back into the kitchen. The T.V. was blaring, and Kady glanced into the living room.

The kids from this morning were still there, and they looked at her with open eyes as she watched them. Kady hurried up the rest of the stairs.

She locked the bathroom door behind her, then braced her hands on the counter, leaning down over the sink. She washed her face, wiping away several-days-old makeup. As she blotted her eyes, she felt something hard connect with her thigh.

“Fucking hell,” she said, looking down at the boy peering out at her from the cupboard. She stepped back, rubbing her thigh. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

He crawled into the open, shutting the door carefully behind him.

“Oh, and thanks for the heads-up about breakfast,” she said as she scanned the room, looking for an outlet. She came up empty and sighed heavily as she collapsed on the edge of the tub. “Big help.”

He looked at her and shrugged.

“So, you understand me, at least. Why don’t you talk? Or do you just hate me?”

No answer, but he pointed to her backpack. She wasn’t sure what he was trying to say. Remind her that he had helped her last night? But it reminded her of something else. She held her backpack on her lap and unzipped it, pulling out the soda.

She held it out. “You want some?”

His eyes lit up and he snatched it from her hands, taking a huge gulp. He looked even more ridiculous holding it than the boy had. She watched him drink, and when he was done, nearly draining a quarter of the bottle, she handed over the Red Vines.

He paused, then, and looked up at her, carefully searching her face.

“Come on,” she said, pushing them toward him impatiently. “I can’t eat them all. And you’re the only annoying little kid around.”

He grinned, a tiny, toothless grin, and took them from her. As he pulled one from the package and bit down, he pointed at her chest. She glanced down as she remembered the shirt.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I needed something to wear.”

The amusement in his face told her it probably wasn’t his, after all. “Do other kids sleep in here usually?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Is it yours, then?” she asked.

He shook his head again.

She thought for a moment. “Is it your sister’s?”

The openness in his face shrunk as his features fell downward. He nodded.

Kady didn’t say anything more about it. She pulled herself into the tub, already feeling the ghost of an ache in her legs. The backpack rested on her stomach, and she finally tore open the bag of Swedish fish. She ate a few, and then chucked one at the kid occasionally.

By the time he was done with the candy, the soda was gone, too. He stood on his toes to turn the light off and then crawled back underneath the sink. Kady glanced over when her eyes adjusted. The doors were open.

She almost laughed, but she didn’t want to disturb him. Her eyes began to close even as she was chewing, so she tucked the bag away and shifted, trying to get comfortable on the thin layers of towels.

Sleep was around the corner when she realized tomorrow was Friday. “Fuck it,” she whispered to the dark. She’d figure it out tomorrow. As her eyes closed again and her body settled, she thought about school and the kid in the cupboard and her new foster home and if she’d fuck it all up by the next time Eliza came. Mostly, though, she thought about the boy. The Boy. Why didn’t she know his name? She hadn’t wanted to know, but now at night, in the crushing silence, she wished she had asked. Only so she had something to occupy herself. Something to twist in her mouth and shape around her tongue and to swallow so it never left her lips.

She was glad she wouldn’t be seeing him again, even as the phone in her pocket pressed reassuringly against her hip.

 

An ache pulsed in her chest as her hands closed around the metal. She held it down. The earrings glinted in the light from the window, making them seem prettier than they were.

“Here,” she said, thrusting them at the woman, who looked up from her coffee and into Kady’s unapologetic eyes.

“What’s this?” she asked, her tone light as her eyes flicked back down to the newspaper.

“Rent.”

She smiled without looking up. “We only accept cash, here, girl.”

“I’ll have cash next time. These are worth at least sixty,” Kady said. She wouldn’t beg, no matter what this woman said to her.

The woman sighed and swept the earrings from Kady’s palm into her own, depositing them somewhere in her dress. “One time only.”

Kady poured herself a bowl of cereal in response.

 

She stepped outside without a plan, and after a bit of walking, found herself at school. She didn’t have anything else to fucking do. At least here she could charge her phone during class.

During lunch she made her way to her next class, glancing at her map. Today, the quad was spilling over with people, a sea of flashing colors that rolled over her again and again. She pushed through each wave with ease. High schoolers were fucking irrelevant to her, after all the things she’d been through.

At the top of the wide, concrete stairs, there was a crowd of people. A deliberate crowd. She rolled her eyes and headed toward the side, veering around them. Despite herself, she found her gaze shifting to the side as she passed. The crowd was tall, but the boy in the center was taller.

As if he sensed her eyes, he glanced away from the shorter boy across from him and met Kady’s eyes. “What’s up, girl?” he called to her, a grin appearing on his face. Her curiosity stopped her from walking away, and she smirked at him.

He quickly pulled his eyes back to the other boy in the circle, just in time to see a fist flying toward his face. It was a hard blow, and the short boy looked as though he almost hadn’t expected it to land. As he stumbled backwards, the short boy shook his hand off and searched the crowd, looking for a friendly face, maybe, or simply a way out. 

The boy rubbed his jaw with his palm as he regained his balance and laughed disbelievingly. “Fuck you, nerd. It’s on, now.” He stepped toward the short boy and he simply stood there, hands down by his sides. The crowd had yielded no escape, and he’d had one good move. He looked small and feeble, now.

Her body was moving before her brain had fully processed it. She pushed through the crowd like they were weeds, and they mindlessly parted for her. “He’s not worth it,” she said to the boy, tugging at his arm. She lowered her voice, “Listen, I think you rely on flying under the radar. If you get in trouble, people are gonna start really looking at you, and I think that’s the last thing you want.” 

He shrugged her off. “You don’t know me,” he said, cold again.

“You two done?” the short boy said.

“Hey, fuck off, asshole. No one’s talking to you,” he snapped.

“You’re the one who needs to fuck off, freak,” the short boy said, squaring his chin.

“I’m a freak, huh?” he said incredulously. “What’re you then, with your dumbass kid’s books and pathetic boner for that mopey—”

The short boy hit him square in the face, his fist shooting out straight and sharp. 

“Fuck!” he yelled as he stumbled backwards again. It was more frustration than pain, Kady thought.

She looked at the short boy in disbelief. “Dude…” she said. Not as much of a pussy as he looked.

The boy surged forward, recovered from the blow, with his fist already in the air, and Kady moved to stand in front of him when she felt something slam into her right temple. She buckled slightly, throwing her hand up against her head, trying to stop it from spinning.

“Shit, I’m sorry, that was an accident,” a voice above her said, and a hand tentatively touched her shoulder.

“Excuse me! You three, step away from each other right now!” a stern woman’s voice said. A chorus of sighs rose from the crowd, and the hand on her shoulder disappeared. 

In the main office, Kady was sandwiched between the two boys on a drooping sofa that smelled faintly of mildew. The secretary’s sugary perfume mingled with it, and each time Kady inhaled, her eyes watered. The smell faded slightly as she got up from her chair and disappeared into the office behind her desk.

“Hey, look, I’m really sorry,” the short boy on Kady’s left said. He hung his head like a wounded animal, and his greasy hair fell into his face. He looked pathetic enough that Kady was only a little pissed.

“Yeah, whatever,” she muttered.

“She doesn’t want to hear your whining, bitch,” the other boy said. He was slumped in his seat, his knees spread apart, and his arms crossed loosely across his stomach. Almost relaxed, except his left leg was bouncing just a little too fast.

Today, he was wearing a loose red vest and nothing under it. In her strained sideways glance at him, she saw a glimpse of something shiny. The necklace winked proudly up from his chest.

The secretary reappeared. “Quentin Coldwater?” she asked, looking to Kady’s right first. He snorted. The short boy, Quentin, raised his hand weakly. “Mr. Coldwater, you’re free to go,” she said, settling herself behind her desk again. She was already clicking on her keyboard as she said, “The principal will see you two in a minute.”

Kady was about to ask if she was fucking kidding her, but the boy beat her to it. “Are you fucking serious? Just because his friend tried to off herself, he gets to go around throwing punches for no reason?”

The door clicked shut behind Quentin.

The secretary sighed and looked up at them. “Language. Just sit there and be quiet, okay?”

“Fuck that, he punched me in the face!” Kady said indignantly.

The secretary made a noise of disapproval in her throat. “ _Language_.”

Kady shook her head and slouched back against the couch, assuming a similar position to the boy. “Fucking bullshit,” she muttered, still shaking her head.

“My name’s Penny.”

“What?” she said, turning toward him.

He shrugged. “They’ll say our names in there. I figured I’d make the introduction out here.”

“Penny? What, is your full name Penelope?” she scoffed. 

“Hah, hah. Just you wait,” he said dryly.

“Right, well, my name’s Kady,” she said. “Not fucking Katie. Kady with a D.”

“Pretty name.” He winked at her.

“Yeah, yours too, _Penny_ ,” she said.

“Mr. Adiyodi, Ms. Orloff-Diaz, come in, please,” a voice said from behind the desk. A middle-aged man was standing in the doorway of his office, watching them with a serious expression.

Penny got up first and Kady followed, both of them trudging into his office and taking the seats in front of his desk. He closed the door and then plopped back down in his chair.

He began, “So, William, it’s my understanding—”

Kady let out a burst of laughter. “What? Your name’s William? You’re like”—she had to take a breath—“an old English grandpa or some shit.”

“I fucking told her,” Penny said to the principal.

 

When they had been released back into the world, they stood silently outside together. Lunch had only just ended. She’d heard the bell from the office.

He looked at her, and she met his stare. She was taken aback by how he was looking at her. The look in his eyes was hungry. But not the kind of hungry she was used to seeing in boys’ eyes, silently threatening aggression. This look was soft. Gentle. She felt like a pussy for even thinking it.

“What?” she demanded.

“Your earrings are gone.”

“Huh? Oh, right. Yeah, I had to trade them.” She twisted her earlobe between her fingers.

“For what?” he asked.

“Shitty cereal.”

He shook his head. “Too bad. They were damn sexy.”

“I was more disappointed about the cereal,” she said.

He grinned at her. “I’m gonna buy you some new ones.”

His apartment was at the end of the hall, apparently. If it was the one she was thinking of, she had seen the balcony from below. These apartments were pretty nice. In the middle of town, with a code to get in and everything. They were above one of the local businesses, but so far, she couldn’t hear the bustling café below.

A new pair of gold earrings dangled from her ears. Each one was a half-circle with tiny leaves poking off the metal. They were beautiful. And Penny liked them, too, so that’s what he’d bought her. Stolen, technically. Looking at them sent only the tiniest of pangs through Kady’s chest for reasons she couldn’t acknowledge, much less address.

He unlocked the door and motioned for her to go in first. She’d been starting to think she’d underestimated him, that maybe he was more well off than she realized. But as she stepped inside, she knew she’d been right the first time. 

It was basically empty, except for a folding table and some cheap plastic chairs. There was a stained mattress, too, on the floor in front of the sliding door. A flimsy, torn white sheet was bunched up at the foot of it.

“Do you live alone?

“Yeah,” he said shortly.

“You’re only seventeen, right, dude?” she asked with raised eyebrows.

He nodded. “You were right about me flying under the radar. It’s been just me for a while.”

She knew not to ask anything else about it. “So, wanna hang for a little?”

“Mmm, I thought that’s what we were doing,” he said, the teasing glint appearing in his eyes again. His voice was deliberate and low, rumbling with intention. It could vanish in an instant, she was learning, replaced with something hard and impenetrable.

She shrugged her jacket off and tossed it toward the mattress. He ignored it. She held his eyes as she pulled her shirt off and threw it in the same direction. She wasn’t wearing a bra. The only one she owned was a stupid trainer one from when she was thirteen and it wouldn’t fit past her shoulders anymore.

“Woah, woah, what’re you doing?” he asked, his voice quickly reverting to his normal tone as his eyebrows furrowed. 

“Uh, what’s it look like, dude?” She crossed her arms and glared at him, the flush in her face, she told herself, a product of annoyance.

Penny grabbed the shirt from the ground and crossed over to Kady. “You don’t have to do that,” he said, looking down at her seriously. He helped pull the shirt back over her head, and then reached beneath her hair, his hands grazing her neck, and pushed it up and over the collar of the shirt.

She shook herself and his hands fell away. “Yeah, I fucking know I don’t have to. Fuck you. You think you’re real special, being all nice and shit? I don’t need that bullshit.”

“You’re crazy,” he said, shaking his head. She pushed her middle finger up and was about to spit out a retort when his eyes flicked down to her mouth.

He leaned down, kissing her hard as his hands pressed lightly against the sides of her head. She kissed him back without hesitation, equally aggressive. Her tongue brushed against his and she smirked when he made a breathy noise, which he quickly smothered against her lips. He eventually broke the kiss, but as he pulled back, his hands stayed, drifting down her sides until they lingered against her hips.

“Jesus, woman,” he said, exhaling, and looked at her with a grin.

She felt her shoulders relaxing, but her face was still flushed. Less from annoyance, now.

“Come on,” she said, and tugged him toward his mattress.

She had to pull hard for him to move his feet, and when they were sitting in the middle, looking at each other, he shook his head. “We’re not gonna fuck.”

“Yeah, alright,” she said carelessly. This was not the closest she had come to having sex, but it was the first time since freshman year she actually wanted to continue. A girl named Abigail had got her to take her shirt off in her basement before her brother came in and beat her so badly her fosters actually took her to her to the hospital for once.

“It’s because you’re fucking cool,” he said, answering the question her pride wouldn’t allow her to ask. “Your first time should be good.”

She snorted. “Fuck off. It’s not my first time.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Whatever you say.”

She shoved at his shoulder, and then leaned in and kissed him. They sat there, becoming increasingly entangled, until Penny pushed her shoulders down and her head sunk into the mattress. 

They made out until Kady lost track of time. Somehow, her shirt ended off again, which she thought was fucking funny, but she forgot to laugh. 

Eventually, he pulled back from her and stood up, walking into the kitchen and grabbing something. Before she could sit up, he was lowering himself back down to the mattress, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He lit it and turned his head to look at her.  
“You smoke?” He blew the smoke upward, but it still snaked down to her eyes and drew out tears. She blinked them away and pushed down the emotion in her chest.

“Not really.” 

He was silent for a moment. “Don’t, okay?”

She meant to say she’d do what she wanted, but her throat was suddenly dry, and the words kept slipping back down. She paused mid-exhale, no longer quite sure how to continue, and then she was hot all over and her heart was thumping a warning.

She watched a crack in the wall until she could breathe again. “Someone once asked me the same thing.”

“Yeah?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“I didn’t listen,” she said as she took the cigarette from him.

 

Eliza never came back. A dour young woman came in her place.

“You were expelled from your first high school, correct?” she asked Kady at their first meeting, sitting across from each other at the dining room table. It was the first time she’d been allowed a seat at the table.

“Isn’t that the kind of shit that’d be in my file?”

She didn’t look up at her. “No swearing, please. And you will find I am meticulous. Now, the basis for your expulsion was a physical altercation with another student, resulting in—breaking the other student’s neck.” Her tone didn’t change, but her eyes darted up to Kady’s face as she finally looked at her. "He died."

“I was returning the favor,” Kady said bitterly. He sent her to the hospital, she sent him to the hospital, but worse. By the time she was expelled, little Abigail had half the school calling her a homicidal dyke.

“It was ruled as self-defense,” she continued like Kady had said nothing, “But you were recommended for anger management classes, correct? I have no record here of you attending any.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I didn’t,” Kady said. “Eliza didn’t think I needed them.”

“I see. That was a serious overstep on her part. Starting next Tuesday, you will attend classes weekly.”

She opened her mouth to start protesting, but movement behind the woman caught her eye. Arlo was standing in the doorway, watching her.

“Fine,” she said, and her chair squeaked uncomfortably as she stood and started toward the stairs. Arlo followed her, and the woman craned her neck, trying to glimpse Kady. “Excuse me, young lady, but we are not finished!” she called. The bathroom door shut behind them, and then Kady couldn’t hear anything else she said.

Arlo still didn’t talk to her, or anyone, but one of the other kids had told her his name. His cupboard had towels in it now, along with the cleanest pillow Kady could find and a stack of library books that she had brought him. The scratching she had heard her first night turned out to be him carving drawings into the wood. They were pretty good, actually.

They sat with their backs against the tub and Kady gave him her phone. Penny had given her a Netflix password, for whose account, she had no idea, but whoever they were, they didn’t seem to notice or mind Kady’s occasional presence. 

“Please not more anime,” she said.

He grinned at her as Edward Elric’s face appeared on the screen.

 

Two months passed. She went to school sometimes, but mostly not. She only slept at Penny’s sporadically because she didn’t want to leave Arlo alone, but she spent every day with him. They did everything there was to do in Bluehill, so one day he took her down to San Francisco.

They stayed in a run-down hotel, on a street that smelled so bad she could taste it, but when they were in their cramped room, she could forget it all for him. It’d been a week when he asked her to come to dinner with his cousin.

“What?”

“Forget it,” he said, looking away.

“Wait.” She put a hand on his arm. “I was just surprised. You don’t talk about your family.”

“Yeah, and I’m not about to start,” Penny said warningly, but leaned into her hand anyway. “He’s up here for work or whatever and texted me. He’s a dick, honestly. But he’s rich, and we could use some cash. Right?” 

She held her hands up. “Hey, I don’t have any relatives to wheedle out of money, but if I did, you best believe I’d take advantage. Let’s go.”

He smiled as he kissed her.

Penny’s cousin was different from in him in almost everywhere. He was paler and leaner, with a neat beard and a navy-blue suit. As he walked over to the restaurant entrance to meet them, welcoming them loudly and grinning, taking Penny’s hand first and then her own, she saw he had a well-tried, pleasant exterior. He’d practiced it too much. He introduced himself as Max while they made their way back to his table, and she watched him, she saw a cruel shadow in his face. She had an eye for that kind of thing. Little splinters of his true self hung on him, and no matter how much he brushed at his fancy coat, he could not dislodge them. The way his smile faltered when he thought no one was looking, the hollow look in his eyes as Penny talked, his lingering stare on the waitress, the two, three items he sent back to the kitchen. The smile that danced at the corner of his mouth when the waitress heaved apology after apology.

“How’s your wife?” Penny asked, baring his teeth. He would swear it was a smile, but to everyone else, it looked more like a grimace. He hated small talk.

“Oh, good. She’s good.” He dismissed any further questions by looking at Kady. “So, how did you manage to get this wonderful girl on your arm?”

Kady almost choked on her lemon water. She glared at Penny as he held her knee, a gesture that felt like both reassurance and a warning. “She was bored enough to talk to me.” He was keeping his sentences noticeably brief, but Max was consistently ignoring his brusque tone.

“And?” he pressed.

“And she’s my favorite fucking person,” Penny said. He didn’t look at Kady, but his grip tightened on her.

“Lucky boy,” Max murmured, still looking at Kady. She met his stare firmly and watched him until he looked away.

The two teenagers ate quickly. Max took his time. He tried to engage them in conversation several more times, and Kady took over, noticing Penny kept rubbing his temple. She needed to keep him from losing his cool completely, or this stupid dinner was all for nothing.

“I’ll be back,” Penny said, standing abruptly. The movement startled Kady. His voice sounded distant, like his mind was busy, caught up in a dream.

“Sure,” Max said, looking at him disinterestedly. He turned back to Kady as Penny vanished around a corner. “So, what’s your family like?”

“Oh, they’re lovely,” Kady said, a saccharine smile spreading across her lips. “Just me, my mom, dad, and little brother—one big happy family. And there’s Fuzzball, of course. He’s a poodle.” She gave her most irritating giggle but then cut it short. It wasn’t fun without Penny.

They talked some more, though really, he talked at her and she pretended to listen. At least fifteen minutes must have gone by the time she found herself staring at the place Penny had disappeared. She waited another excruciating five minutes, and then she excused herself and went to go check on him. There was a pit in her stomach, but she told herself on a loop that he was okay. The bastard was probably just trying to make her spring the question on Max. God, he was a bitch, sometimes.

She pushed open the door to the men’s room without hesitation and stepped inside. Penny was lying on the grey tile in front of the sinks. The way his palms were open and facing up made him look vulnerable in a way he would never look if he was awake.

“Oh, fuck, fuck,” she said, the words slipping unconsciously between her heavy breaths as she knelt over him and felt his pulse with her fingers.

She’d been cold less than a minute ago, and now she was burning up and her heart was slamming in her chest. Her fingers left sweat on his neck. Flashes of somewhere far away, a bright room, an empty bathroom mixed with her vision, until every time she blinked she was seeing something new. Through her unfocused vision, she called 911, and then sank to the ground completely, pulling his head into her lap.

The loop changed: he wasn’t okay, he wasn’t okay. She blinked again, and she was holding a woman’s long hair in her hand instead of Penny’s shoulder. 

Fuck. She really wasn’t okay. 

She couldn’t believe she’d kept so much from him, the closest thing to a cure for everything the world had thrown at her.

“Kady?”

She looked down at him as he slowly pulled his head out of her lap and brought himself to a sitting position. She scooted forward and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her knees firmly pressing into his sides. “Give yourself a minute. Don’t sit up yet,” she said.

He didn’t say anything, but he leaned back into her. “Kady, I love you,” he told her.

She laughed weakly. She didn’t say it back. Instead, she told him, her lips close enough to his skin they grazed his cheek, “I’m gonna tell you everything.” Her wet laugh returned. “I’m gonna tell you _everything_ ,” she repeated.

 

Kady stood outside of his hospital room. She started pacing and then stopped. Her hands were burning, but she kept the pressure of her nails on them. While she waited, she tried to calm herself. If she started yelling when they came back out, they’d kick her out for sure.

The door opened, not enough for her to glimpse Penny. Max and a doctor came out. The doctor’s face was blank, impossible to read. Expected, Kady thought, for her profession. Max’s face, though, was blank the same way. Not expected. Not normal.

“What?” she said and they both looked up to her, almost seeming caught unaware, like they had forgot there was an angry seventeen-year-old waiting for them.

“He’s okay, Kady.” Her name in his mouth made her shiver inexplicably. “He’s fine. Fainting is not uncommon when someone, especially someone young, is under a fair amount of stress. Right, Doc?” He turned to the woman.

She gave a curt nod and then hurried away.

“I need to see him,” Kady said and made her way toward the door, but Max reached out and gently put a palm against her chest, pushing her back.

She recoiled instantly, and quickly ran her raised hand through her hair, instead of letting it continue toward his face. He smiled kindly down at her, oblivious to the black eye he had very nearly acquired.

“They’re still only letting family see him. He’s sleeping now, anyway. The doctor said it was very important we didn’t disturb him. We can come back first thing tomorrow—okay?—and he’ll be ready to leave by then.”

Kady balled her hands into fists and shoved them in her pockets. “Well, why’s he have to stay overnight, anyway? That’s fucking weird, right? He just fainted.”

“That’s exactly why, Kady. He just fainted. They want to make sure he’s totally fine.” He put an arm on her back, guiding her toward the exit. “You can stay at my hotel, tonight, and I’ll bring you straight back tomorrow.”

“I don’t…” she glanced back to the door, her mind trying to work itself out of the fog. Her phone was dead, she had no idea had to get back to their hotel, and then how to get back here in the morning? She’d end up on the streets overnight. Penny was the one who knew the city, not her. “Fine,” she said and swallowing around the lump in her throat, let him guide her.

His hotel was across from the Ferry Building. It was sleek and shiny and didn’t smell like a chemistry experiment gone very wrong. His room was on the fortieth floor and it was complete with a kitchen and living room but had only one large bed.

“You can have the bed,” he said. His voice sounded strange, faraway, like Penny’s had sounded in the restaurant. She hoped he didn’t faint.

“Thanks,” she said without looking at him, tracing the soft duvet with her fingers. She was about to crawl on top when hands roughly encircled her waist and pulled her backwards.

“What the fuck, get off!” she yelled, kicking out wildly, but he held her stiffly against him, one of his hands traveling up to her chest. He winced as she jabbed her elbow into him, and then he was heaving her onto the bed, pinning her down with his full weight.

He leaned down to her lips, and she was screaming so loudly her voice cracked, and then there was a real crack, loud and sharp and aching, vibrating through her. The weight on her lifted, and immediately after there was a thud.

She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was fourteen and small. Zachary was coming toward her. Three years older and furious, so tall he was blotting out the sun as he neared her. Her right eye throbbed as she stared at his curled fist. Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, disgusting. He said it, she thought it, she said it, he thought it, she didn’t know, but it was coming from somewhere, slamming into her from all sides.

Her hands sung of their own volition. A pair of dangling, messy braids flashed across her vision. She was barely conscious during the whole brief affair. It felt like an hour in her head, but in reality, it probably took her five seconds to snap Zachary’s neck. _Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, disgusting_ , she whispered over his corpse. 

She looked over the bed. Max was lying on the ground, sprawled awkwardly with his leg underneath his back. It didn’t matter, because he couldn’t feel it. His neck lolled forward unnaturally, and Kady saw bone protruding through the skin. She dry-heaved once, and then again, until finally a slight trickle of yellow dripped down to his shirt. She wiped her mouth.

Her heart was slow. Normal? Definitely not fast. It had been, just a minute ago. Over, and over, slamming into her ribs. The threat was gone, so it was satisfied. She looked down. Her hands were the threat. She had barely noticed them moving. 

She wouldn’t have stopped them, if she had. She wished she could do it again.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed with a body below her, she thought. She wrapped her arms tight around herself, so much that it burned her shoulders, and then she squeezed tighter. Penny’s cousin was dead. Max. Penny’s cousin. She decided he didn’t deserve a name. She killed Penny’s cousin. Was Penny okay? She left him in a hospital. How could she do that? She should have yelled and punched and fought into his room. She didn’t even fucking try. She just left.

Would he forgive her for leaving? For killing his cousin? Would he believe her? He didn’t like his cousin, called him a dick, remember? Remember? But he knew him. He met Kady sixty days ago.

She started laughing as she remembered why they had gone to dinner with him at all. Money. They were going to ask him for money. Cunt probably would’ve given them a twenty each and sent them on their way.

“Your daughter, ma’am…she was laughing. The EMTs found it very troubling. I was there myself and I can’t help but say it was uncanny.”

_Disgusting, the body on the bathroom floor, destroyed on the inside. Disgusting, the body in the sun, broken on concrete. Disgusting, the body on the carpet, mouth open and hands outstretched, reaching and reaching…_

The door shut behind her, lock clicking into place. She hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the handle. She watched forty stories fall away as she glided down through the air. The elevator beeped and pushed her out to the lobby.

It was windy outside. Cold, but the wind was the real killer. It whipped her back and forth, burrowed under her skin, swept her into the road, pulled her toward the sea. She fought it half-heartedly. She walked down the sidewalk, swaying occasionally off the curb and into the street, but she always pulled herself back up when she saw lights on the pavement in front of her.

She wasn’t a fucking girlfriend to Penny. She wasn’t a fucking sister to Arlo. She was good for only one person. She was only fit to take care of herself. Everyone else was just worse off with her.

_Disgusting, the body wobbling down Market Street_.

 

It had been three-hundred-and-sixty days, and she was in a hospital. Her eyes weren’t even open yet, but she could feel the scratchy sheets on her legs and the I.V. in her arm.

Her eyes. They stung as she opened them. Sticky and wet tears slipped down her cheeks. She let the trails dry on her, prickling uncomfortably. There was a hollow pit in her stomach, strangely empty. Like all her organs have been scooped clean out.

She sat up and they sloshed around, reminding her they were still there with a wave of nausea. She took inventory of the rest of her body. Her knuckles were purple and aching, her head was throbbing, and her feet were so dirty the sheets were smudged with brown.

Her head pushed her out when she tried to recall her last memory. Fine by her. There was something wrong. It ranged from “fucking devastating” to “oh, shit.” She didn’t have to deal with either if she couldn’t remember.

The nausea surged forward again, catching her distracted, and she lost her hold on it. She leaned over the edge of the bed and heaved, again and again until her throat was raw and burning.

When she lifted her eyes, she saw a middle-aged woman standing at the foot of her bed, clad in mint scrubs and holding a clipboard.

“Detox’s rough, kid,” she said. “Hopefully you’ll learn your lesson, huh?”

“I’m not a fucking addict,” Kady said, wiping her mouth.

“Uh-huh.” she said. “Listen, I was sorry about your friend. I’m sure he was just happy he got so much time. Poor kid had problems with his heart all his life.”

“What?” Kady said roughly, looking at the woman closely. Her form was mostly indistinct, but past the blurry edges, she reminded Kady of someone.

“You were here, about a year ago, right? Left your friend here? That kid never mentioned you again, but I remember your face.” She shook her head as she scratched something on the clipboard. “I remember the ones who tell me to fuck myself.”

The dried tears burned. Her heart began a feeble run, sending a painful prick against her chest every few seconds. “Is this San Francisco?”

“Yeah,” the nurse said, sparing her the tone of disbelief and only casting her a sad look.

“Wait, wait, fuck,” she said, rubbing her temples and shaking her head. “The kid you’re talking about—are you talking about Penny?”

“Yes, Penny. You and his cousin left him here. His cousin never did come back, just so you know. He passed six months ago.” When the woman looked up, Kady was pulling the I.V. out and pushing herself up from the bed.

“That fucking cunt, he lied!” she yelled as the woman rushed over to her, wrapping her hands around her shoulders. “He lied, he lied! He said he was fucking fine!” With an abrupt jerk of Kady’s hand, the woman slammed back into the wall and sank down to the floor.

“I’d kill him again,” she muttered as she pulled her clothes on, wrapping the hospital gown around her arm, covering the spreading bloodstain there. Six months. She couldn’t fucking remember where she’d been six months ago. She could’ve been drunk or asleep or high or fucking someone else.

Afternoon light filtered through the hallway windows. No one bothered her. She glanced at each wooden door she passed. Imagined his empty body inside.

She blinked every few seconds to keep her eyes clear. When she was finally outside she sank down on the sidewalk, pressed her back into the building behind her.

Fumbling in her pocket she found a cigarette and lit it, pressed it angrily to her lips, shoving the unsaid secrets back down her throat, swallowing them whole. She’d been ready to spill open for three-hundred-and-sixty days. Raw for three-hundred-and-sixty days. She stitched herself back up, now.

Her heart throbbed, and she stared bitterly into the traffic, refusing the tears and growing angrier as they fought her. She wiped her eyes until they stung, but her heart still ached, and she couldn’t reach through her chest to quiet it. It had been harder to keep under control all these months, but she had managed. Covered the hurt by thinking about where he was, what he was doing, how much better of he was. But he wasn’t better off at all. He was gone.

Suddenly, she felt so alone she couldn’t breathe. She remembered the crack in his wall, but it did nothing. 

She tried to stifle the aching in her chest: he never would’ve understood. He wouldn’t have believed her. Maybe he’d have thought she was crazy. Maybe he’d have thought he was crazy. 

Maybe he’d have accepted her.

 

Her hands healed slowly, and she thought about who she had punched.


End file.
